Chris Doss wrote back: It was central to the Fascist self-conception that his movement, in his mind, represented a spiritual alternative to the supposedly vacuous, anti-human materialistic ideologies of liberal capitalism, on the one hand, and Bolshevism, on the other. Right?
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Mike B), who is very tardy is reading his e-mail, says:
Yes. I believe they claimed a spiritual superiority for their politics, similar to other reactionary, fundamentalist strains today. They believed that the bourgeoisie were essentially "flabby" and weak to sustain a strong national spirit. The working class was just too brutish and pedestrian to be able to run a State in a proper manner. They pointed to Soviet Russia as the prime example of what they were fighting on that front. The Fascists saw themselves as a kind of self-annointed, neo-aristocracy A lot of conservatives agreed with their analyses, without necessarily buying the ideology of Fascist spiritual pedigree.
Fundamental to M&G's and indeed Hitler's Fascist politics was the notion that the class struggle was a purely ideological invention of Marxian international socialism. The Corporation was supposed to remedy this "infection" of the national body politic by involutarily placing workers and bosses into one co:operative structure. This facet of actually, existing Fascism is hinted at here the piece you quoted:
******************************** We wish the working classes to accustom themselves to the responsibilities of management so that they may realize that it is no easy matter to run a business... We will fight both technical and spiritual rear-guardism...
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Thus, by circumventing the class struggle, the Fascists hoped to strengthen the nation, so that it could dominate other, weaker nations.
Later, Mike B)
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