The Essence of Fascism

[359] [360]

Quadragesimo Anno, the Pope

[361] [362] …teachings of Jesus.

I. Fascist anti-individualism

The common complaint that Fascism has not… [363] After having…

Spann, the prophet…

Hegel Marx [364] Ernst Krieck

Mussolini Malaparte Julius Evola Hitler Rosenberg [365] Gottfried Feder

Oscar Wilde

Baümler, Blüher, and Wirth, philosophers [366]

Thus, Friedrich Gogarten's Politische Ethike…

It is the Individualism of the Gospels.

II. Atheist and Christian Individualism

[367] [368] Dostoevsky's The Possessed [369] […] Dostoevsky Nietzsche

[…] Christian Individualism arises out of the precisely opposite relation to the Absolute. “Personality is of infinite value, because there is God”. It is the doctrine of the [370] Brotherhood of Man. That men have souls is only another way of stating that they have infinite value as individuals. To say that they are equals is only restating that they have souls. The doctrine of Brotherhood implies that personality is not real outside community. The reality of community is the relationship of persons. It is the Will of God that community shall be real.

The best proof of the coherence of this series of truths lies in the fact that Fascism, in order to rid itself of one of the links finds itself constrained to renounce them all. It tries to deny the equality of Man, but it cannot do this without denying that he has a soul. Like different properties of a geometrical figure these statements are really one. The discovery of the individual is the discovery of community. The discovery of equality is the discovery of society. Each implied in the other. The discovery of the person is the discovery is the relationship of persons.

For the idea of Man and the idea of Society cannot be dealt with separately. What Fascism is contending with is the Christian idea of man and Society as a whole. Its central concept is that of the person. It is the individual in his religious aspect. The consistent refusal of Fascism to regard the individual in this aspect in the sign of its recognition that Christianity and Fascism are completely incompatible.

… that he has soul.

[371]

III. The solutions

[372] Ludwig von Klages

Hegel's philosophy of the Absolute Mind

IV. “Soul” versus Mind

[373] [374]

V. Spann, Hegel and Marx

[375] [376] [377] J.J. Bachofen's antithesis

[…] The core of Klage's anthropology

VI. Klages, Nietzsche, and Marx

[378] [379] Karl Schmitt's “Enmity” principle: Politics, according to him… [380] [381] [382]

VII. Racialism and Mysticism

[383] [384] In Eckehart's Christian faith… [385]

Rosenberg

VII. Vitalism victorious

[386] [387]

The Old Testament and the Jewish mind, the New Testament and the Christian mind, the Roman Church and Marxian Socialism, Pacifism and Humanism, Liberalism and Democracy, Anarchism and Bolshevism are all in turn denounced as Universalist. This series includes almost everything the author despises from the Palms to the Sermon on the Mount and the Communist Manifesto.

…by the Aristotelian, “The whole is before the parts,” or the Hegelian, “The Truth is the whole.” When Rosenberg … [388] [389] [390] … Tolstoi's and Dostoevsky's poetic embodiments of the Christian Revolution, For the …

IX. The sociology of Fascism

[391] [392] [393]

Text Informations

Reference:
Original Publication: “The Essence of Fascism”, in Christianity and the Social Revolution, p. 359-394
KPA: 13/06
Recent Publication:

Lge	Name
EN
DE
FR	« L’essence du fascisme », chap. 22 des Essais de Karl Polanyi, p. 369-398

See also

• Abraham Rotstein, Weekend notes, II, 12.