Institute members converged on the communist reading that fascism follows from liberalism.

Evidence

However, the transformation from liberalism to totalitarianism was more organic than liberal theorists acknowledged. As Marcuse wrote in his first essay in the Zeilschrijt: “The turn from the liberalist to the total-authoritarian state occurs within the framework of a single social order. With regard to the unity of this economic base, we can say it is liberalism that ‘produces’ the total-authoritarian state out of itself, as its own consummation at a more advanced stage of development.” 39 In short, fascism was intimately related to capitalism itself. In one of his most frequently quoted phrases, Horkheimer wrote in 1939, “he who does not wish to speak of capitalism should also be silent about fascism.” 40 As we shall see, however, when we discuss Franz Neumann’s Behemoth, the Institut was never fully in agreement about what this relation really was. — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 403 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

In light of National Socialism, the question emerged as to whether the ‘command economy’ of Nazi Germany had rendered capitalism as such inoperative. While some of the members of the Institute – Franz L. Neumann, A.R.L. Gurland, Otto Kirchheimer16 and Herbert Marcuse17 – championed the thesis ‘that the fascist state merely represented the political form appropriate to advanced monopoly capitalism’, Friedrich Pollock and Horkheimer maintained that the contemporary political-economic order of both Nazi Germany and the United States was aptly described by the term ‘state capitalism’. — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 509 (#complicates, via linked claim)

These uncertainties about how fascism should be defined were accompanied by equal uncertainty about its stability and historical prospects. It was still widely believed by communist leaders that the ruling class might decide that the fascist option was too costly, and switch to a social-democratic alternative. The notion that social-democracy was the “left wing of the bourgeoisie” had been generally accepted, for example, by Italian communists since Zinoviev first put it forward in 1922 (by 1924 this had become “the left wing of fascism”). Moreover, it was true that the fascists had not entirely suppressed bourgeois political institutions; indeed, even communist members still sat in the fascist-dominated parliament. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 32 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Fascism emerges organically from liberalism within a single capitalist social order — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 403; Institute members split over whether fascism was capitalism’s political form — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 509; Social democracy was theorized as a bourgeois instrument continuous with fascism. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 32

Broader Connections

• Fascism emerges organically from liberalism within a single capitalist social order #corroborates (0.95) — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 403
• Institute members split over whether fascism was capitalism’s political form #complicates (0.85) — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 509
• Social democracy was theorized as a bourgeois instrument continuous with fascism. #expands (0.80) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 32