Comment: “Fascism is the destruction of liberal ideas and institutions in the intere$t of those who own the instruments of economic power.” (Laski) (2008)
Harold J. Laski, who moved in the 1930s from pluralism to a Marxian reading of the state, treated fascism as capitalism’s emergency answer to the threat that democracy posed to property. The statement is a functional definition: fascism is identified by whom it serves, not by what it believes. It is strong on effects, weaker on causes and content.
Unpacking Laski’s Claim
- Capitalist democracy rested on a bargain: the vote let workers press for reform, and economic growth paid for the concessions. When the Depression ended growth, owners had to choose between democracy and property, and chose property.
- Fascism is the instrument of that choice. It destroys exactly the liberal institutions through which labour could challenge ownership: free unions, socialist parties, a free press and parliament.
- Doctrine is therefore secondary. Laski called the search for a philosophy of fascism a waste of effort; fascism was power built upon terror.
The Case for the Class Reading
- Georgi Dimitrov, reporting to the Seventh Comintern Congress (1935), endorsed the definition of fascism in power as the open terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, most chauvinistic and most imperialist elements of finance capital.
- The record supports this. Both regimes abolished free unions, destroyed the left and protected property. Conservative elites handed them office: the King appointed Benito Mussolini in 1922, and Hindenburg’s circle made Adolf Hitler Chancellor in 1933. Franz Neumann‘s Behemoth (1942) described Nazi rule as a cartel of big business, party, army and bureaucracy.
- In India, M. N. Roy (Fascism: Its Philosophy, Professions and Practice, 1938) and Jawaharlal Nehru likewise read fascism as the last resort of a threatened social order.
The Critiques
- Autonomy of politics. Timothy Mason argued (1966) that Nazi politics came to dominate the economy: business lost control over rearmament and war, and the Holocaust served no owner.
- Social base. Seymour Martin Lipset (Political Man, 1960) saw fascism as the extremism of the centre: a revolt of shopkeepers, artisans and farmers squeezed between big capital and organised labour. Later electoral research found the Nazi vote cross-class, and Henry Ashby Turner (1985) found big-business funding before 1933 modest.
- Ideology. Zeev Sternhell traced a coherent fascist synthesis back before 1914: tribal nationalism fused with Georges Sorel‘s revision of Marxism. Roger Griffin (The Nature of Fascism, 1991) located its core in palingenetic ultranationalism, the myth of national rebirth.
- Hannah Arendt (The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951) rooted totalitarian movements in atomised masses, not classes, their ideology overriding even self-interest.
- Variation. Capitalism was in crisis everywhere, yet the United States answered with the New Deal and Sweden with social democracy.
Assessment and Relevance
Laski is right about function and wrong about essence: fascism served property without being its puppet. His deeper question survives. Thomas Piketty (Capital in the Twenty-First Century, 2013) warns that concentrated wealth corrodes democratic equality, and Freedom House recorded a 20th consecutive year of global decline in 2025, driven by elected leaders dismantling checks rather than by class dictatorships.
Conclusion
Laski’s formula explains whom fascism served but not why millions followed it. The class interest was necessary but not sufficient. Nationalism, the rebirth myth, racial hatred and a mobilised middle class made fascism an autonomous and more dangerous force than capitalism’s hired guard.