I know it always supports big business. And it’s a reactionary force that people in power turn to when things go badly for the workers and they think of revolt.
But fascism also demands genocide and killing of millions of people and that would only hurt the capitalists, no? Because these are people who would otherwise be working and increasing profit used to increase productivity etc etc etc. But if you kill them you reduce the labor force and thus drive up the price of labor, reducing your profits, and thus what you can spend on improving productivity? And other countries which didn’t do so would become more advanced, leaving you behind.
I think the most useful way to view fascism is an emergency failsafe mode for capitalism. Sure, it is destructive and brutal and hurts even their own profits in the short term, but if the alternative is socialism, their choice has already been made.
Don't forget the very real role that slavery plays in fascism. The total violent subjugation of workers to reduce wages to at or below subsistence. For a period, this generates super profits at the expense of maintaining a powerful gendarmerie/police force, but over time it erodes the productive capacity of the nation.
This is one of the real ways in which Fascism "consumes itself". By liquidating large portions of the labor pool for immediate profit and for the purpose of disarming and destroying worker power.
I don't know if this is a useful response or not (or even completely correct theory-wise), but my understanding is that capitalists do not innately value profit, the profit motive is simply what drives them under capitalism, because the accumulation of that profit is what gives them the power, status, and physical comfort that they more innately crave as animals.
So, in a hypothetical fascist takeover where even millions of working people are murdered by said fascists to stave off a communist movement, so long as their relative comfort and status are largely preserved, I think capitalists are mostly fine with it.
You can think of "exploitation" and "profits" as two complimentary dials. If profits go down by 50%, but exploitation goes up by 55%, then capitalists will consider that good for themselves in the long run, since it entrenches their power in the system. Once climate change starts to really accelerate, profits might go down in the short term, but if fascism keeps any kind of left-wing revolution from happening, capitalism will only get stronger in the long run, since people will be more desperate for work/wages.
To answer your question you should try another question.
What did fascism become when it was not defeated? Did it become something new and clearly identifiable as different to capitalism? Or did it simply morph back into liberalism again?
In Germany and Italy fascism was defeated with extreme violence but we can't say the same for Spain, Chile and others that reared their heads from time to time.
They morphed back into liberalism over time, why? Because liberalism is a more efficient machine for extracting profit. It lies to the proletariat and convinces them to get on with the work without fuss. Many proles will in fact do this, feeling that their lives are "good enough" to not rock the boat. This mode however is not an effective machine of mass violence, it cannot carry out a national mass-murder campaign against its opponents.
Fascism is brought out when the bourgeoisie feel threatened enough to require it as a tool of massive violence. Liberalism is brought back when the threat has passed. It does not oppose capitalism, it secures it.
Fascism is capitalism in extreme reaction, demanding class collaboration. Fascism is not a natural development of capitalism such as imperialism, but a reaction to decay that can be seen for instance in Germany when the whole economy was in ruin due to WW1.
The ideologies are mildly opposed but not deeply. Capital profits more under liberalism. Making sure everyone has access to markets and the right to own property means that more people who can buy and labor within the system. If you go around killing off minorities you're also killing off potential customers.
Fascism is fundamentally opposed to communism, since communism seeks to remove racial and class divides, while fascism seeks to entrench all hierarchies. Capitalism is also fundamentally opposed to communism, obviously. So the ideologies agree that communism must be stopped, and that takes a higher priority to the capitalists than making sure they can sell things to the victim of the day.
Capitalism is also a system that puts large amounts of power into the hands of individual people, as a consequence of them performing a specific structural role in capitalism, rather than due to their actual understanding of capitalism and their role in it. The ideology of capitalist elites does not actually have to be capitalist, and can be anything else that's palatable to people who are placed under a position of extreme privilege. Many of the elites have other compatible ideologies like a fascist / great man theory / "right to rule" thing, or Christian prosperity gospel, rather than actually believing in capitalism. So inevitably many of them are going to choose to support fascism, even though that's suboptimal for the capitalist system, because they're fascists.
if social democracy is the carrot, fascism is the stick. It's still capitalism, just capitalism at total war with the revolutionary proletariat. It can only do this by running a permanent (until it caves in on itself) wartime economy and squeezing the labor force for more than it can bare.
fascism is capitalism in crisis and Decay , as the base is generally dominant but only in a crisis the power instruments that are allways lingering bellow get more visual by their Use by the Ruling Class . the "German" fascism should not be seen as a "Standart Unit of fascism" ,from which one should define it . Nazi Germany is not typical.
The German capitalists were some of the only ones who increased their total wealth over the course of the 30's
Yes, a little bit. Fascism is capitalism in decay, capitalism doesn't turn to fascism if everything is going great. Capitalism tends to turn to fascism when it's under threat, usually from some sort of worker's movement. That threat is usually communism but there's no reason it can't be something else, even just capitalism's own contradictions becoming too much to bear.
So, fascism isn't coherent, but one of its features are ramping up the exploitation of the proletariat by increasing concrete surplus labor value- longer hours, quicker work, worse conditions in the workplace and at home- as the primary mode of increasing profits like early industrial Britain instead of the way modern capitalism increased profits through the extraction of abstract surplus labor value. And it order to do that it needs a stronger state to keep the workers in line, and in order to do some incoherent central planning.
Fascism=When Capitalism takes damage and sheds its skin and gets bigger and redder and madder like a Metroid boss
This sounds flippant but I am not joking
Fascism is like a rash, an inflammation, on the body of capitalism. It's an attempt to drive off actual threats to capitalism :specter-global: that damages itself in the process.
