The nature of the State: As Understood in Communism vs. Fascism A government is a natural expression of a country’s identity of who they are. In comparing governments, the basic knowledge of what is government is a key foundation. Studying different ideas of government and comparing them can expand minds to view things in different perspectives and can illuminate how diverse societies understand themselves and each other.
Evolving governments, result in the rising of nation-states. A nation is based on the identity, culture, language, history, and myth of a population. A state is more based on currency, infrastructure, military, and contains geopolitical landmasses, particular people, and specific governing authority. The natures of each government while different both entail a population.
The nature of the state, in both communism and fascism, plays an important role in keeping a nation. These nations standard of living is set on subjects versus citizens. Subjects are people who have little or no say in mostly everything or are just nonliving things whereas citizens have a voice within their community and can take a stand in their personal beliefs. The subject versus citizen mindset, evolved in both governments has established the nature of the state.
Communism is “a theory of social organization advocating common ownership of means of production and a distribution of products of industry based on need.”1 Communism is believed to have started from the church during the fall of the Roman Empire. The church was in control and only those that were a part of “the church,” were given the privilege to read. All others were looked upon as inferiors. As the Renaissance began to develop, there was the birth of humanism. With humanism becoming popular, two people in a certain area were no longer connected.
Not having the church be the leader and focus of the people, the declaration of the rights of man lead to riots and chaos. Karl Marx was known to be one of the most influential advocates for communism. “The definition of communism was refined into a clearer concept of structured society by Marx, and subsequently communism became closely associated with Marxist philosophy.”2 Marx fundamentally believed that a thing or thought could not be separated from its opposite. For example a slave-master could not be separated from its slave because then the title of a slave-master would be nonexistent. He also believed in the language of alienation. The language of alienation was what he viewed as the fundamental misunderstanding of the workers. “The alienation of the worker in his object is expressed as follows in the laws of political economy: the more the worker produces the less he has to consume; the more value he creates the more worthless he becomes; the more refined his product the more crude and misshapen the worker; …the more the work manifests intelligence the more the worker declines in intelligence and becomes a slave a nature.”3
With Marx’s theory of the alienation of the worker, he wanted equality. Marx decided to split the people into two groups, proletariat, which was the poor and working class and the bourgeoisie, which were the upper, industrial, rich class. By having these two classes and keeping the separation between the two, order and dictatorship took place. With the implementation of the separation system, Marx was able establish the nature of the state.
The second government, fascism, has no particular type of people to look at. Fascism is made up of a series of beliefs or theories that offer a concept of politics of the state. This type of government birthed during the late 19th early 20th century when Germany and Italy were not countries but a collection of property. Benito Mussolini is credited with creating fascism. He decided to create a myth called, “Glory to the Italians.” Through time, the people then embraced Mussolini’s myth as truth.