The fascist Benito Mussolini had high praise for the economic theories of John Maynard Keynes:
“Fascism entirely agrees with Mr. Maynard Keynes, despite the latter’s prominent position as a Liberal. In fact, Mr. Keynes’ excellent little book, The End of Laissez-Faire (l926) might, so far as it goes, serve as a useful introduction to fascist economics. There is scarcely anything to object to in it and there is much to applaud.”[1]
So that you can make your own judgment, here are the two relevant documents:
* John Maynard Keynes, The End of Laissez-Faire (1926) in HTML or PDF.
* Benito Mussolini and Giovanni Gentile, The Doctrine of Fascism (1932) in HTML or PDF.
Both are also available via my Texts in Philosophy page.
Source:
[1] Quoted in Lawrence K. Samuels, “The Socialist Economics of Italian Fascism,” The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics.
Related:
My assessment of whether Keynes should be held responsible for Keynesianism.
“Mussolini and Kant on war and the sacrifice of individuals.”
I am reading your book about postmodernism and I like it very much but this seems like a “low-blow”. You are well-aware that economics per se is often considered secondary to fascists except as an extension of nationalistic counter-Enlightenment ideals or a means of cementing popular support while for Keynes it came from a very different place and was a means of preserving Enlightenment ideals from the fascists and was entirely compatible with democracy and anti-fascism. Also in practice there was an obvious difference between the two, with Mussolini’s economics being far more authoritarian and “all over the place” as the fascists often just seemed to endorse whatever seemed popular when it came to economics and at the time laissez-faire was not popular, but they also wanted to oppose Marxism, so some confused form of corporatism was cobbled together.
Keynes and Mussolini sharing some agreement about economics doesn’t really prove anything, it’s an association fallacy. Mussolini also disavowed anti-Semitism and hard racialism for most of his dictatorship, does that mean all non-racists are fascistic? Latter day far-right collectivists like Le Pen and Pinochet warmed up to laissez-faire when that became popular instead, so does that mean laissez-faire is also authoritarian? On economics fascists seems to think this:
“Is it not explicitly orthodox Marxism?
Will it cement my support?
Will it strengthen and unify the nation?”
If they answer in the affirmative to all of them anything goes because they seem mostly indifferent to economics otherwise and to treat it as a (at most) secondary concern.
I am not clear why it’s a low blow to quote Mussolini directly. Of course it’s worth asking the follow-up, as you do, about exactly how many points of agreement there are between fascist and Keynesian economics.
On the fascist side you suggest it was “cobbled together” and just following all-over-the-place popularity. I recommend Benito Mussolini and Giovanni Gentile’s The Doctrine of Fascism (1932) for the well-worked-out principled ideology.
On the Keynesian side, I recommend his short but deep John Maynard Keynes, The End of Laissez-Faire (1926) to see how far down the anti-Enlightenment and pro-authoritarian road he goes. (Or my summary article, “Can We Blame Keynes for Keynesianism?”.)
Thank you for the reply I appreciate it. Although most of the essay is more descriptive than normative I can kind of see where you get the idea that he is an authoritarian from the following paragraph where he shares his own views:
“I criticise doctrinaire State Socialism, not because it seeks to engage men’s altruistic
impulses in the service of society, or because it departs from laissez-faire, or because it
takes away from man’s natural liberty to make a million, or because it has courage for
bold experiments. All these things I applaud. I criticise it because it misses the
significance of what is actually happening; because it is, in fact, little better than a dusty
survival of a plan to meet the problems of fifty years ago, based on a misunderstanding
of what someone said a hundred years ago.”
The one sentence (“takes away from man’s natural liberty to make a million”) obviously has the strongest statist leanings in the piece (although despite his support for heavier taxation he never supported a cap on income). That said the liberal Keynesian argument would for this would be that at a “million” in 1926 one could already buy everything they could want so they already had full “economic liberty”. Is this a competing form of liberty with an Hayekian vision? Sure, but not to the point of being Counter-Enlightenment, it seems like two forms of competing Enlightenment visions like Millians vs Lockians.
I’d imagine you’d consider the first two parts “authoritarian” but really it depends on how “altruistic” qualities are brought out. Keynes might agree with spirit of bringing out altruistic qualities but not agree with HOW or to the EXTENT it was done. If supporting a welfare state makes one authoritarian than most of the world, including the US and Britain, would have to be considered authoritarian. There is a difference between encouraging charity or even more taxes and gulags and totalitarianism. Keynes also said of Soviet Russia that it (9http://socialdemocracy21stcentury.blogspot.com/2011/08/keyness-opinion-of-communism-and.html):
“‘exhibits the worst example which the world, perhaps, has ever seen of administrative incompetence and of the sacrifice of almost everything that makes life worth living …’; it was a ‘fearful example of the evils of insane and unnecessary haste’; ‘Let Stalin be a terrifying example to all who seek to make experiments.’”
(As he grew older he seemed to have grown more “conservative” in terms of being skeptical towards experiments. Anyways “bold experiments” are not necessarily authoritarian either, as that is exactly what the Enlightenment was in many respects, including the establishment of the United States)
Skidelsky says of Keynes:
“His assault on the scientific pretentions of Marxism and the horrors of the Soviet system was unremitting, and needed no revelation of mass murder. He insisted on the supreme importance of ‘preserving as a matter of principle every jot and tittle of the civil and political liberties which former generations painfully secured ….’.”
In the last paragraph of your link Keynes says:
“The next step forward must come, not from political agitation or premature
experiments, but from thought. We need by an effort of the mind to elucidate our own
feelings.”
This is clearly a pro-Enlightenment sentiment. When compared to the actual “Counter-Enlightenment” movement (whether they be on the Right or the Left) Keynes and Hayek (and most of their philosophical/economic descendents) may as well be virtual ideological twins in my opinion.
The biggest issue is the conflation of an ECONOMIC theory with a POLITICAL one, which might only apply in the most extreme cases like anarcho-capitalism (always anarchist) or Marxist-Leninism (always planned) in which case the two are indistinguishable. Fascism treats economics as a secondary concern, Keynesianism is an economic theory that treats it as a primary concern. Fascism can have planned economies, mixed-economies, or even more “laissez-faires” leaning economies (Franco’s Spain actually spent very little money GDP-wise in comparison to its liberal neighbors). Keynesianism is an economic system that is always mixed, but is otherwise compatible with most political systems, whether liberal democratic, authoritarian, or somewhere inbetween. Politically most Keynesians are liberals who maintain basic political liberties if not expand them, while fascists may pay lip service to political freedoms when they speak to the public but smash liberties while in power, and in practice their economics appears to be a later-day mercantilism.
On a side-note I think you should prepare to be far more well-known. You were well ahead of the curve in terms of clearly documenting the postmodernists (for which I congratulate you) and the dangers they could pose, and now that their views are bleeding into the more “mainstream” left (and displacing the modern social democrats or as you not-incorrectly call them “moderate communitarians”) your book is going to become far more popular. Not to sound overdramatic but I think liberals and libertarians are going to have to work together to push back against postmodern fascism, liberals trying to smear libertarians by bringing up von Mises’ temporary quasi-support for fascism (or the Chicago School and Chile) to insinuate libertarians are closet fascists isn’t helping and isn’t even accurate, and neither is libertarians trying to bring up economic commonalities between Keynes and 1920’s Italian fascism to insinuate they share a “Counter-Enlightenment” agenda. Neither of them are fascists, only fascists, with fascist cores and their denial of reason, are fascists.
Here is another argument to why Keynes’ theory is not totalitarian: http://socialdemocracy21stcentury.blogspot.com/2011/06/keyness-remarks-in-german-edition-of.html
Reading your discussion with Jimmy (and your previous post, Can We Blame Keynes for Keynesianism?], I side with you.
I think, however, one aspect has not been touched in this discussion and it could strengthen your case.
It’s no secret that Social Democracy originated as a **revisionist** spin-off of Marxism, particularly with Eduard Bernstein. One may argue that since its origins Social Democracy has moved on and further distanced itself from Marxism, but that would be irrelevant, as we’ll see soon and as I am sure you’ll understand.
What is, perhaps, less well-known is that Social Democracy, as Sheri Berman has argued from a Social Democratic perspective, shares that origin with Fascism. She is not alone. Historian Zeev Sternhell, considered a world authority on Fascism, concurs with her. He has argued and amply documented that Fascism is another such revisionist outgrowth.
In other words, both, Fascism and Social Democracy shared with orthodox Marxism a critique of laissez-faire capitalism. Orthodox Marxism’s critique, however, was and remains more radical: capitalism must be laissez-faire and has to be superseded by socialism.
The Fascist and Social Democratic critiques were more moderate: they agree with orthodox Marxism that capitalism has problems, but, and this is crucial, capitalism doesn’t need to be laissez-faire. **Managed** capitalism can overcome those problems: dirigisme or corporatism. That was in a nutshell Keynes’ proposal. It’s clear that the need to manage capitalism has not changed in the views of modern Social Democrats or Keynesians, however hard they might try to distance themselves from orthodox Marxism.
This is not to say that Fascist and Social Democratic general political programmes are identical. They are not. Social Democracy admits a liberal democracy as system of government, while Fascism does not. Fascism is opposed to the Enlightenment programme, Social Democracy may not be, even if interventionism could lead to that.
This brings us back to Mussolini’s quote. Other contemporary Fascists or quasi-Fascists shared Mussolini’s dirigiste/corporatist views. The Belgian Henri de Man is an example. His 1933 De Man Plan is considered quite similar to Roosevelt’s New Deal: one could say he was a Keynesian before Keynes. He was also de facto head of the Belgium collaborationist government during Nazi occupation. The French Marcel Déat is a similar example.
Moreover Keynes himself may have reciprocated, however cautiously and subtly and discreetly, to Mussolini’s words of praise. In his 1933 essay National Self-Sufficiency, renouncing free trade, he recognizes that there may be a downside to protectionism and that often it can lead to ruinous outcomes, but in the cases of Italy and Germany there was hope or at least it was too early to say:
From these reflections on the proper purposes of the state, I return to the world of contemporary politics. Having sought to understand and to do full justice to the ideas which underlie the urge felt by so many countries to-day towards greater national self-sufficiency, we have to consider with care whether in practice we are not too easily discarding much of value which the nineteenth century achieved. In those countries where the advocates of national self sufficiency have attained power, it appears to my judgment that, without exception, many foolish things are being done. Mussolini, perhaps, is acquiring wisdom teeth. But Russia to-day exhibits the worst example which the world, perhaps, has ever seen, of administrative incompetence and of the sacrifice of almost everything that makes life worth living to wooden heads. Germany is at the mercy of unchained irresponsibles–though it is too soon to judge her. The Irish Free State, a unit much too small for a high degree of national self-sufficiency except at great economic cost, is discussing plans which might, if they were carried out, be ruinous.
In connection with this subject of Keynes and his Nazi/Fascistic affinity, you might find these two items, both of them written by John Toye, extremely educative.
Keynes on Population. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. pp xi+260. ISBN 0-19-829365-3. There’s a Kindle edition, but I’m afraid it’s pricey.
Keynes on population and economic growth. Cambridge Journal of Economics. Vol. 21, No. 1 (January 1997), pp. 1-26
To his credit, G.C. Harcourt, a prominent post Keynesian economist, gave Toye’s book a very favorable review (Economic Journal. Jun. 2002, Vol. 112 Issue 480, pF391). I imagine it must have been a difficult task for him.
Harcourt:
“My own view of Keynes is that he was (like us all, only more so) a Jekyll and Hyde character but that, overall, the events of his life provided a resounding ‘Yes’ to G. E. Moore’s conundrum: Is it possible both to be good and to do good? Nevertheless, the particular episodes, actions and views explored by Toye reflect Hyde far more than Jekyll. Toye makes this explicit and does not apologise for doing so. In his concluding paragraph, he defends his view ‘that Keynes was afflicted by a considerable coarseness of sensibility’ and castigates those who after Keynes’s death made him ‘a secular saint’ (p. 233).”
A word search for the passage about Keynes in the M&G pdf supplied, alas, does not yield the quotation… Does Lawrence K. Samuels, (“The Socialist Economics of Italian Fascism,” The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics) claim that it is from The D of F?
Although often attributed to Mussolini online, the quotation, ‘Fascism entirely agrees with Mr Maynard Keynes’, is instead from a book in which Mussolini contributed a preface: see Barnes (1929, 113-4), available via google books.
James Strachey Barnes (1929). Universal Aspects of Fascism. Williams and Norgate, London: UK.
https://www.google.com.au/books/edition/_/N_jSAAAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PR3
Benito Mussolini did not oppose Marxism, he carried a silver medallion with Carl barks his picture on it in his pocket. When he spoke out against communism or socialism he was speaking out against the party that had kicked him out and a gentleman named Vladimir Lenin told that party that they had made a huge mistake in doing so. Lenin himself admired Mussolini because well, Mussolini was pretty much copying what Vladimir Lenin had done in Russia.
Both Lenin and Mussolini saw the obvious flaw in Marxism with the people being in control of production and nothing to indicate what and how much of anything needed to be produced. With no price mechanism or Central oversight you get everybody growing corn and nobody growing tomatoes, or everybody making windows for houses but nobody making windows for automobiles. This is one of the main fatal flaws in Marxist philosophy.
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