“Hayek taught his classes, wrote his papers, and debated the English academics, but he couldn’t cut through their economic and political confusion about fascism and communism. His concerns led to his most well-received book, The Road to Serfdom, where he tried to enlighten them about this foundational truth: fascism and communism are both socialism and quite similar. His warnings about the totalitarian movements building in Europe seemed fruitless; most of his colleagues believed fascism a product of capitalism and not of socialism. Hayek insisted National Socialism is what it says it is, socialism.
In the introduction to The Road to Serfdom, Bruce Caldwell describes
how Hayek began his book as a memo to the director of LSE:
“It began as a memo to the director of the London School of Economics, Sir William Beveridge, written in the early 1930s, disputing the then-popular claim that fascism represented the dying gasps of a failed capitalism (Ibid, 1).”
Fascism representing failed capitalism is Marxist propaganda, but unfortunately, many people believe it today. Historically, in Italy, Germany, and Spain, the communists and fascists were political rivals competing for likeminded people, with fascists also often calling themselves socialists.
The communists portrayed fascists as right-wing to demonize them, as the fascists sometimes attacked the communists as leftists. Today, European and American elitists call fascists right-wing for political reasons, because apparently, their whole political spectrum represents socialism. Or, they strategically want to disparage capitalism to promote larger government.
Hayek showed that not only does fascism not come from capitalism, it often springs from failing communism. He gave examples and quoted some ideological leftists who admitted it, brokenheartedly (Ibid, 78-80). They acknowledged the utopian dream frequently turned into something uncannily like a fascist dictatorship. What happened over time? Karl Marx’s futuristic predictions became the reality of Stalin’s Russia, Mao, and Pol Pot.
Can’t we give many examples of communist legacies today beyond the killing fields? Can we call China communist now? They control industry autocratically, including many nominally private government-connected businesses. It sounds like fascism. What do you call Putin’s Russia? Vietnam is supposedly still communist, but in reality, a commercialized dictatorship.
There are numerous examples, and Hayek understood the mechanics, accurately observed human behavior, and saw the patterns many decades ago. He saw those with similar mindsets gravitating to both, leaders and followers, although communists use internationalist, but fascists, nationalistic rhetoric. They are both expansionist dictatorships, side by side on the left.
Mussolini, the world’s first fascist leader, and Hitler’s archetype was a well-known communist until he declared himself anti-Marxian and anti-free enterprise, but “collective” and “totalitarian,” or, for the “state (Mussolini, 1932, 7).” He and his advisors created fascism out of Marxism. The truth is, communism and fascism are rivaling socialist siblings, two sides of a coin. Hayek explained the interactions between the two parties in Germany:
“And what is true of the leaders is even more true of the rank and file of the movement. The relative ease with which a young communist could be converted into a young Nazi or vice versa was generally known in Germany, best of all to the propagandists of the two parties (Hayek, The Road to Serfdom, 2007 [1944], 80-81).” P. 4-6