Mises, Bourgeois Thought, and Fascism

I've been getting into quite a few debates with libertarians over the past few weeks about a number of topics. I'm not interested in repeating those debates, which largely haven't been that interesting.  However, those debates have caused me to come across a small passage from Ludwig von Mises in the 1927 preface of his book, Liberalism, that has been at the center of a small polemical debate about the thinker.  Critics have used this material to present Mises as a supporter or even sympathiser with the fascist cause, while the Mises Institute has provided a broader context for the quote to show that the material is more critical than supportive of the regime.  In this sense, the institute gives a broader context for the quote than the opponents and is probably more accurate, but I want to use this material for a different purpose than that of those involved in this debate.  Rather than looking at von Mises as an idiosyncratic thinker who is either guilty or innocent of fascist sympathy, I want to look at the thinker as somewhat representative of the bourgeois response to the crisis of the times and the ambiguous role that fascism was seen as a solution to that crisis.

To do that, we should first look at the passage itself.  Rather than drawing from the initial passage that is drawn on by Michael Lind to critique Mises, I'll look at the longer passage that is provided by Jeffery A. Tucker of the Mises Institute to show that the original quote is taken out of context.  Here's the material.

"Here we go again. Today, statist-nationalist Michael Lind writing in Salon seizes on one passage from Mises’s book Liberalism to argue that Mises was a crypto-authoritarian (which is a heck of an accusation for Lind, of all people, to make; Lind wrote an entire book that seeks to revive nationalism as a political ideology – even regretting that fascism discredited nationalism).
The passage from Mises as selectively quoted:

It cannot be denied that Fascism and similar movements aimed at the establishment of dictatorships are full of the best intentions and that their intervention has for the moment saved European civilization. The merit that Fascism has thereby won for itself will live on eternally in history.

And that’s where Lind ends it, failing to add Mises’s actual conclusion:

But though its policy has brought salvation for the moment, it is not of the kind which could promise continued success. Fascism was an emergency makeshift. To view it as something more would be a fatal error."

I want to start out by noting that Tucker is absolutely correct to note that the small part of the passage that Lind excludes changes the meaning of the passage.  Rather than acting as a full-throated endorsement of fascism, an impression that is created by the first section of the passage, we see a far more reserved position being taken.  Fascism has accomplished something, and has acted in the defense of something called 'European civilization.'  But Mises endorsement of the action is a provisional one.  It was an understandable response within a particular state of emergency, but that response was a 'makeshift' one, and any attempt to transform its practices into a long-term solution would be a 'fatal error.'  Tucker goes on to make two other defenses of the statement, noting that the statement was made early in the existence of the phenomenon and that other mainstream institutions made similar defenses of fascism, often without the caution expressed by Mises.  I don't think the first claim really holds up well.  Fascism had existed for a number of years by the time of the publication.  The party was formed in 1919 and had taken power in 1922.  Moreover, its full dictatorial takeover of the state had already taken place.  Most of the negative qualities of the movement had already taken place by the time of the publication.

But Tucker's second position is largely true.  Mises was far from the only person to make this kind of statement, and many defenses showed less caution than Mises.  The passage that Tucker extracts from the New York Times Magazine certainly shows this hastiness if presented in full context.  Fascism was viewed sympathetically by wide swathes of elite opinion and many of those thinkers were less cautions than Mises.  Certainly, libertarians and conservatives have engaged in the same misrepresentation that we see with Lind.  Conservatives have, for instance, removed references to the criticisms that the New York Times made about the otherwise positive review of Mein Kampf.  But, they still have pointed out a trend that can't be ignored even if it needs to be somewhat corrected.  However, that common thread points to a common concern that remains unaddressed in the work of Tucker.  We might perhaps get a glimpse of it if we return to the primary concern expressed by the New York Times.  As note previously, the paper found Hitler's anti-semitism appalling, but saw in the figure something that outweighed that feature, his anti-communism.  Hitler may be a goon, but he was an opponent of the specter of communism, the threat of workers rising up and reorganizing society to benefit themselves, rather than the few.  (Just a small note, I specifically invoke the specter of communism because I don't think that this accurately describes the Soviet Union.  It would be too large a task to spell out why within the confines of this paper, though.) 

When we think about the context around the comments of Mises, we see a similar situation.  Italy just after the first World War saw a sharp uptake in worker's militancy, taking the form of strikes and factory take overs.  Workers not only demanded more wages and benefits, but were openly challenging the structures of private property and the bourgeois government itself, through the formation of workers' councils that were put in place to control production and potentially more.  Benito Mussolini's Fascist Party first entered the political arena by organizing paramilitary squads that we designed to crush this uprising.   The party was in the pay of the employers to accomplish this, and was able to build off of those early successes and take over the state three years later in a staged march on Rome.  (At this point, the party was still very small, and had no chance of military victory.  The party was given this victory by the king.)   When we think about this context, the statement made by Mises becomes more easily understood.  The threat to 'European civilization' is precisely this democratic effort to reorganize the society for the benefit of the many.  The institutions of private property were threatened by the democratic nature of the society and needed to be temporarily suspended to re-institute those relations, but permanent dictatorship was also a threat.  We can see an analogy to the later sympathy that fellow traveler Friedrich von Hayek showed for the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet; temporary dictatorship could be a check on the democracy that both distrusted in the name of private property, but it was a dangerous proposition.

However, rather than seeing this phenomenon as one limited to the world of capitalist libertarianism, I want to hold onto the point that Tucker pointed out, albeit for radically different purposes.  The broad spectrum saw the fascist response as a potential safety valve to the crises in their own societies posed by the broad masses that looked (erroneously) to the Soviet Union, the radical possibilities embedded in the Spanish Republic, and perhaps most significantly to their own radical capacities in order to challenge the embattled structures of capitalist accumulation that were created by and defended by that dominant grouping.  Within this context, we might turn to turn to the words of the Spanish anarchist, Buenaventura Durruti to understand this phenomenon.   "No government fights fascism to destroy it.  When the bourgeoisie sees that power is slipping out of its hands, it brings up fascism to hold onto their privileges."

(One last note, I don't think we should ignore the equally racist implications in the phrase, 'European civilization, and while that racist thread falls outside the present discussion, it cannot be ignored in a larger discussion of the phenomenon.)

(You can also find an analysis of the quote from Corey Robin here that provides a larger section of the quotation that makes the anti-communism of the passage even clearer.)

No government fights fascism to destroy it. When the bourgeoisie sees that power is slipping out of its hands, it brings up fascism to hold onto their privileges.
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/b/buenaventu325901.html

No government fights fascism to destroy it. When the bourgeoisie sees that power is slipping out of its hands, it brings up fascism to hold onto their privileges.
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/b/buenaventu325901.html

No government fights fascism to destroy it. When the bourgeoisie sees that power is slipping out of its hands, it brings up fascism to hold onto their privileges.
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/b/buenaventu325901.html

No government fights fascism to destroy it. When the bourgeoisie sees that power is slipping out of its hands, it brings up fascism to hold onto their privileges.
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/b/buenaventu325901.html