Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning

The employed are integrated within the institutions of the regime: syndicalism and corporatism enable the whole nation to be organized. The system is based on the legal recognition of professional unions, on collective contracts, on the prohibition of strikes and lock-outs...[This approach] has already borne fruit. Labour and capital have ceased to consider their antagonism an inexorable fact of history: the conflicts which inevitably arise are solved peacefully thanks to an increasing degree of conscious class collaboration. The social legislation of Italy is the most advanced in the world: it ranges from the law on the eight-hour day to compulsory insurance against tuberculosis. (Benito Mussolini, 'The Achievements of the Fascist Revolution,' in Fascism, ed. Roger Griffin [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995], pp. 63-64)

22. R. J. B. Bosworth, Mussolini's Italy: Life Under the Fascist Dictatorship, 1915- 1945 (New York: Penguin, 2006), p. 311.

23. Frank Kingdon, That Man in the White House: You and Your President (New York: Arco, 1944), p. 120; Helen M. Burns, The American Banking Community and New Deal Banking Reforms, 1933-1935 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1974), p. 100; David Schoenbaum, Hitler's Social Revolution: Class and Status in Nazi Germany, 1933-1939 (New York: Norton, 1980), pp. 25-26.

24. William Manchester, The Arms of Krupp: The Rise and Fall of the Industrial Dynasty That Armed Germany at War (New York: Back Bay Books, 2003), p. 152.

25. Robert N. Proctor, The Nazi War on Cancer (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2000), p. 38.

26. Claudia Koonz, The Nazi Conscience (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2003), p. 73.

27. Jay W. Baird, 'From Berlin to Neubabelsberg: Nazi Film Propaganda and Hitler Youth Quex,' in 'Historians and Movies: The State of the Art: Part 1,' special issue, Journal of Contemporary History 18, no. 3 (July 1983), p. 495; Peter Goddard, 'The Subtle Side of Nazi Propaganda Machine,' Toronto Star, Jan. 19, 1996, p. D4.

28. Proctor, Nazi War on Cancer, p. 138.

29. Stuart Chase, The Economy of Abundance (New York: Macmillan, 1934), p. 313. The progressive economist John Commons said that the new system of pressure groups and trade associations created by the New Deal amounted to 'an occupational parliament of the American people, more truly representative than the Congress elected by territorial divisions. They are the informal American counterparts of Mussolini's 'corporate state,' the Italian occupational state.' Abram L. Harris, 'John R. Commons and the Welfare State,' Southern Economic Journal 19, no. 2 (Oct. 1952), pp. 222-33; Higgs, 'Crisis and Quasi-Corporatist Policy-Making.'

30. Jonathan Alter, The Defining Moment: FDR's Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2006), p. 185.

31. When it was still unclear whether the Nazis would attain power in Germany, Gustav Krupp, the patron of the enormous and infamous arms manufacturer, gave specific instructions to his chauffeur. When leaving meetings with various political leaders, he explained, he told his driver to pay careful attention to which hand he carried his gloves in. If Krupp emerged with his gloves in his right hand, the driver was to give him the traditional Prussian greeting (clicked heels and a tap of the hat). If Krupp had his gloves in his left hand, the chauffeur was instructed to give him the full 'Heil Hitler' salute, which Gustav would return with equal gusto. Krupp, like most of Germany's leading businessmen and industrialists, did not like Hitler or the Nazis. Indeed, Krupp — who was rightly tried for war crimes at Nuremberg — had joined other business leaders in trying to prevent Hitler's appointment to the chancellorship. But when it was clear that history was on the side of Nazism, German business started to fall in line.

32. Lizette Alvarez, 'An 'Icon of Technology' Encounters Some Rude Political Realities,' New York Times, March 4, 1998, p. D4.

33. For the Nazi Party platform, see www.hitler.org/writings/programme. Alan Brinkley's Voices of Protest has an outstanding discussion of the sources of anti-department-store rage. The chief problem was that the big chains put local general stores out of business. These stores were important cultural and financial institutions in rural America, providing, among other things, credit to farmers during bad seasons. See Alan Brinkley, Voices of Protest: Huey Long, Father Coughlin, and the Great Depression (New York: Vintage, 1983), p. 198.

34. Neil Steinberg, New York Daily News, Feb. 13, 2005.

35. Roughly 40 percent (or slightly over forty million) of American households own at least one dog, and roughly 35 percent of households contain a cat (and half of them have more than one). The vast majority of pet owners pay for veterinary services in cash with almost no paperwork and no long waits and with a high quality of service. Competition to get into veterinary school is tougher than it is to get into medical school. Why? Because Congress stays out of it (and because they haven't allowed the trial lawyers to get into it). And because government leaves the vets alone, the vets leave government alone.

36. As state governments get involved in more regulatory issues, the numbers of lobbyists at the state level have exploded as well. New York State, for example, has nearly four thousand registered lobbyists.

37. Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, 'A Tale of Tobacco, Pleasure, Profits and Death,' New York Times, April 15, 1996.

38. Christine Hall, 'Unholy Alliance,' National Review Online, April 12, 2006.

39. The New York Times reported, 'Business leaders applauded yesterday, with varying degrees of enthusiasm, the sweeping proposals announced by President Nixon Sunday night.' Robert D. Hershey Jr., 'Psychological Lift Seen,' New York Times, Aug. 17, 1971, p. 1.

40. Hillary Rodham Clinton, It Takes a Village (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996), p. 301.

41. Kaus (who once worked for Reich at the Federal Trade Commission — charged with figuring out how to rule that closing a factory was an 'unfair trade practice') offers a few examples from Reich's writings. 'But must we choose between zero-sum nationalism and impassive cosmopolitanism?' Reich asks. No! There is 'a third, superior position: a positive economic nationalism.' 'American political rhetoric often frames the decision in the dramatic terms of myth: either we leave the market free, or the government controls it,' Reich complains. 'There is a third alternative, however.' 'Two fictions confound discussions of economic change in America. The first is the fiction of automatic adjustment,' where layoffs have little negative impact. The 'other, opposite fiction,' according to Reich, is that people 'never adjust to change but simply suffer.' Reich claims for himself a 'middle, messier ground' in which '[t]here are many options' for pragmatic, expert-driven control of the economy, using capitalism and socialism together. Mickey Kaus, 'The Policy Hustler,' New Republic, Dec. 7, 1992, pp. 16-23.

42. Ibid., p. 20.

43. When Reagan left office, President George H. W. Bush was ill equipped philosophically to deal with the rising clamor for a more planned economy, particularly when the recession hit (which the media exaggerated to great political effect). Once again, advocates of industrial policy dusted off arguments for a planned prosperity grounded in the moral equivalents of war. 'Our principal rivals today are no longer military,' George Fisher, the chairman of the Council on Competitiveness under Bush, offered in a widespread refrain. 'They are those who pursue economic, technology, and industrial policies designed to expand their shares of global markets. This is the way it is. U.S. policy must reflect this reality if we are to remain a world leader and a role model.' The former defense secretary Harold Brown called for 'a new alliance between government and industry' to develop new technologies. See Kevin Phillips, 'U.S. Industrial Policy: Inevitable and Ineffective,' Harvard Business Review, July/August 1992.

44. Hobart Rowan, 'Clinton's Approach to Industrial Policy,' Washington Post, Oct. 11, 1992, p. H1; Paul A. Gigot, 'How the Clintons Hope to Snare the Middle Class,' Wall Street Journal, Sept. 24, 1993, p. A10.

45. This sort of interference has a cascading effect throughout the economy, creating even more perverse incentives for government and business to get in bed together. Because American companies are required to pay twice the global market price for sugar, most big sugar consumers — Coca-Cola, for example — use corn