Fascism is a form of authoritarian domination, not merely monopoly capitalism’s agent

Evidence

The nub of the article was that, since it took the view that fascism was the political form of monopoly capitalism, it seemed on the face of it to be loyal to the communist theory that fascism was merely the agent of big business. But in reality the article constantly moved beyond this theory in the direction of interpreting fascism as an authoritarian state which appeared not merely to be a consequence of capitalism, but could also be seen as existing wherever `the domination of a minority, on the basis of actual possession of the material means of production’ existed; wherever the concentration of economic power had gone over to organized violence as a means of overcoming social contradictions; and wherever it was possible for a bureaucracy to take decisions about life and death. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 279

Categorization

• XREF: Directly parallels Pollock’s state-capitalism thesis and Neumann’s Behemoth, both covered elsewhere in this institutional history.
• DEEPTHINKING: Reframes fascism as a generic structure of bureaucratic minority domination over life and death, potentially decoupling it from capitalism as its sole cause — a load-bearing move in Critical Theory’s theory of the authoritarian state.