Fascism Today: What can We Learn from a Study of Marxism’s Failures?

This chapter discusses Beetham’s collection of Marxist writings on fascism, ‘Marxists in face of Fascism’, originally published in 1983 with a new edition in 2019. This chapter seeks to learn from earlier failures of Marxism and offers an analysis of contemporary fascism and extreme-right movements. Mason refers to an exchange of letters between him and Beetham. He argues that fascism cannot be fully understand purely in class terms. It is necessary to understand the emotional and irrational aspects of fascism, past and present, and to see contemporary fascism as arising from the collapse of neo-liberalism. Fascism today should be understood as a backlash against modernity and against the aspirations to freedom of hitherto marginalised groups. Such an analysis is needed to prevent the failure of earlier Marxist analyses to properly understand the fascist threat.