Theory and Society (2021) 50:463–487 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-020-09428-8 On the meaning and contemporary significance of fascism in the writings of Karl Polanyi Kris Millett 1 Accepted: 25 December 2020 / Published online: 11 January 2021 # The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature B.V. part of Springer Nature 2021 Abstract This paper assesses the contribution of Karl Polanyi, a theorist largely ignored in fascism scholarship, toward understanding fascism’s interwar rise and present-day implications. In exploring Polanyi’s work in The Great Transformation and lesserknown and unpublished writings, a sophisticated and largely original conception of fascism emerges, rooted in the idea of ‘anti-individualism’ as its foundational trait. Polanyi accounts for fascism’s philosophical content, ideological plasticity, political function and societal form, intervening in debates over how to define fascism, its ambiguity with the populist far-right, and on its both economically reactionary and socially revolutionary qualities. Polanyi’s analysis suggests an enduring vulnerability on the part of liberal capitalism to fascist currents as (1) a solution to the instability of the market economy (and broader incompatibility between capitalism and democracy) at the systemic level, and (2) to the crisis of the individual subject on a social and moral level. I end by considering how Polanyi’s theory might be applied to locate current neo-fascist movements and elucidate the sociological problems underpinning their existence. Keywords Anti-individualism . Fascism . Neo-fascism . Polanyi . Totalitarianism . Vitalism Introduction As world attention fastens to waves of far-right, authoritarian, and neo-fascist political activity, current scholarship is beginning to employ the work of Karl Polanyi, specifically his explanation of the emergence of fascism in The Great Transformation. In this paper, I examine Polanyi’s writings on fascism across a selection of published and * Kris Millett kris.millett@concordia.ca 1 Sociology & Anthropology, Concordia University, 1455 de Maisonneuve Blvd., Montréal, Québec H2G 1M8, Canada 464 Theory and Society (2021) 50:463–487 unpublished texts. In particular, I compare his political economic account of the phenomenon’s rise in The Great Transformation with his analysis of its philosophical undercurrents in the underexamined 1935 essay “The Essence of Fascism”. I argue that a sophisticated and largely original conception of fascism emerges from these disparate writings, accounting for fascism’s philosophical roots, ideological plasticity, functional utility and societal form. Unique to Polanyi’s conception is his placement of ‘antiindividualism’ at fascism’s foundation, with fascist movements operating on an ideological spectrum between ‘vitalism’ and ‘totalitarianism’, using elements of nationalist and racist politics to achieve power under a ‘corporative’ state that reflects both economically conservative and socially radical aims. Polanyi’s analysis makes several important interventions, addressing ambiguities surrounding fascism’s definition and relationship with right-wing populism, while allowing for the existence of numerous complex variants. Polanyi’s work also points to deeper sociological problems to which fascism attaches itself, suggesting an enduring vulnerability in liberal capitalism to fascist currents both at the systemic level in relation to the instability of the market economy, and to a crisis of the individual subject on a moral and social level. I begin by examining some of the ongoing debates over fascism’s conceptualization, and assess nascent attempts to apply Polanyi in analyses of current neo-fascist and right-wing movements. This includes my own summation of Polanyi’s explanation of fascism in The Great Transformation, his most well-known text. Polanyi’s work has traditionally been absent in the discipline of fascism studies. However, scholars in political science and economic sociology are finding that many of the structural dynamics associated with the success of fascist movements in The Great Transformation are duplicating themselves under neoliberal globalization, creating a sense of “déjà vu” (Yarrow 2017). I argue that these analyses, estimable in their own right, do not go far enough to grasp Polanyi’s full understanding of fascism, and thus foreclose his potential insight into fascism’s relevance today. I address this by turning to Polanyi’s other writings, particularly “The Essence of Fascism”, and endeavor to understand how his varying depictions fit as a whole. I end by considering how a Polanyian theory of fascism might contribute to existing knowledge and work to elucidate current developments. This involves exploring issues that potentially transcend Polanyi’s nowfamous account of the global rise and downfall of the market-based economic system. Conceptualizing fascism’s meaning and contemporary Polanyian approaches An ambiguous and at times seemingly paradoxical phenomenon,1 fascism has been highly contested as a political concept. Attempts at a consensus definition and agreement on its core characteristics have been fraught, with Roger Griffin’s condensed description of fascism as a ‘palingenetic’ form of populist ultranationalism2 largely accepted in contemporary fascism studies as the best working definition (2018: 47). 1 Ernst Nolte (1979) remarks how fascism was “simultaneously national and international, reactionary and revolutionary, bourgeois and populist, modern and antimodern” (394). 2 By ‘palingenetic’ Griffin is referring to the myth of ‘renewal’ or ‘rebirth’ common among fascist movements, “the sense of a new start or of regeneration after a phase of crisis or decline” (1991: 136). Theory and Society (2021) 50:463–487 465 There is debate on whether fascism should be considered a coherent ideology (Nolte 1979; Paxton 2004)3 and fascist movements have been notoriously difficult to locate on the political spectrum (Ross 2017). Complaints stretch back to George Orwell (1944) that fascism too easily serves as a “scare word to be levied at ideological enemies” and that overuse has rendered it “almost entirely meaningless”.4 The often-made links between fascism and populism are at best unclear,5 and scholars have long called for fascism to be properly distinguished from far-right and conservative movements (Sternhell 1976; Payne 1980; Paxton 2004; Ross 2017).6 Connected to this is criticism of fascism’s function as a blanket term that works to discredit and suppress all forms of right-of-centre politics (Gregor 2006). Due to definitional ambiguities and its propensity to be deployed carelessly, there are segments in fascism studies that draw limits around fascism’s application. Some authors relegate it to a political phenomenon exclusive to early twentieth century Europe (Paxton 2004; Nolte 1965) and in some cases, the concept is seen as only pertinent to Benito Mussolini’s regime in Italy (Gregor 2006; de Felice 1977). Consequently, there is skepticism among certain scholars towards labelling seemingly comparable contemporary political formations as fascist (i.e. Gregor 2006; Paxton 2004; Morrison 2016).7 At the same time, studies of ‘neo-fascism’ have budded that treat fascism as an ideological genus with identifiable variants evolving through time, examining its post-war permutations all the way to current manifestations (e.g. Griffin 1991, 2008; Eatwell 1995; Köehler 2014; Mammone 2015; Ross 2017). There is also continued disagreement over fascism’s radical content and its relationship to capitalism, with Marxist analyses privileging its reactionary function in maintaining the economic status quo and non-Marxist ‘liberal’ analysts downplaying the importance of capitalism in favour of fascism’s socially and culturally transformative traits (Griffin 2018; Goldfrank 1990). These questions have taken on a renewed relevance as concern grows over a presumptive neo-fascist wave occurring across several countries (Foster 2017; Albright 2018; Stanley 2018), which tends to be conflated with the rise (and mainstream normalization) of right-wing populism, neo- and white nationalism, authoritarian ‘strongmen’, and anti-immigrant sentiment,8 often connected to represent a “universal crisis” threatening liberal democracy (i.e. Mishra 2017; Eatwell and Goodwin 2018; Sandbrook 2017, 2018; Guinan and Hanna 2017). 3 Robert O. Paxton argues that fascism should not be compared to liberalism and conservatism which are, in his words, based on “coherent philosophical systems laid out in the works of systematic thinkers” (2004: 16). 4 Orwell does suggest an “emotional significance” behind fascism’s broad application, a buried meaning unlikely to be made visible “without making admissions which neither the Fascists themselves, nor the Conservatives, nor Socialists of any colour, are willing to make”. 5 Populism itself is a contested concept. Its use has been critiqued for discrediting legitimate dissatisfaction with the established order and lack of effective political representation (Mouffe 2016; Goodhart 2017; Streeck 2017). Tamás (2017) argues that the use of populism to describe regimes such as Victor Orbán’s in Hungary serves to obfuscate what are in reality radical right-wing formations. 6 As Paxton notes, fascists and conservatives often worked together but had largely different aims, with conservatives favouring stability and fascists focused on change at all costs. 7 In The search for neo-fascism A. James Gregor outright contests the idea of neo-fascism and disputes the existence of neo-fascist groups and movements (Gregor 2006). 8 The Trump presidency, for example, has been labeled, sometimes within a single article, as ‘far-right’, ‘authoritarian’, ‘populist’, ‘white-nationalist’, and ‘fascist’. 466 Theory and Society (2021) 50:463–487 The entry of Polanyi and The Great Transformation into fascism studies The work of Karl Polanyi has traditionally been absent in the scholarly canon on fascism, despite his numerous writings on its rise in his lifetime and having twice emigrated from fascist and authoritarian regimes. Currently, however, there is a nascent body of scholarship in political science and economic sociology that employs Polanyi to explore the conditions behind the recent rise of far-right and populist movements globally, including neo-fascism. This work draws primarily from Polanyi’s analysis in The Great Transformation, where the emergence of fascism and authoritarian movements in the interwar period is located within the broader “utopian” endeavor of economic liberals to set up a self-regulating market system, and the deadlock that ensued as the system and its institutional supports (i.e. the Gold Standard monetary system) dissolved on an international scale following the 1929 Wall Street crash. Many current analysts see largely similar dynamics at play in political and economic spheres today, setting the stage for fascism’s possible “second time around” (Sandbrook 2017). It is worth briefly drawing out some of Polanyi’s key arguments in the book before reviewing contemporary applications. As noted, fascism is chiefly presented in The Great Transformation as a by-product of the attempt to transition economies to a market-based system globally. For Polanyi, the market system was a radical and unprecedented innovation with vast social consequences, which his book aimed to denaturalize and refute as an historically inevitable or optimal way of organizing human affairs. Polanyi acknowledges that markets had long existed in human societies but asserts that prior to the nineteenth century they played only a minor role in the coordination of economic activity, and economies themselves were embedded in, and subordinate to, social institutions and largely guided by other motives9 (2001: 49–50). An economic system controlled by markets implied an opposite state of affairs, as Polanyi puts it: “Instead of economy being embedded in social relations, social relations are embedded in the economic system” (2001: 60). For Polanyi, a “market economy” can only function in a subordinate “market society”, where social relations are “shaped in such a manner as to allow [the market] system to function according to its own laws” (60). This is exemplified by the introduction of markets for land, labour, and money across Europe in the mid 1800s, which fundamentally altered the substance of human activity, communal ties, and the surrounding environment.10 It also led to a scenario unique to liberal capitalism where the economy, organized on the price system with privately owned means of production, was thought to operate according to its own motives and independently from the political sphere which, beginning in nineteenth century Europe, was increasingly rooted in democratic institutions of popular representation.11 The principle of the 9 Such as the principles of reciprocity, redistribution and householding – all evident in many ancient and noncolonized societies (2001: 59). 10 Polanyi views the commodification of land, labour and money as “fictitious”, as they are not objects originally produced for sale on the market. The move to place them on a price-based medium of exchange led to deleterious consequences to the fabric of communities, as well as to the capitalist system, as is outlined in the book. 11 This institutional separation of the political and economic is a key feature of liberal capitalism for Polanyi, differing from in feudalism where political authority and economic organization were unanimously embodied in landowning estates. For an extended explanation on this see “Marx on Corporativism” in Polanyi (2018). Theory and Society (2021) 50:463–487 467 free market dictated that any political interference in the operation of the economy would cause friction in the self-regulating system, slowing production and the material well-being of all. The resulting ‘paralysis’ between political and economic institutions was crucial to Polanyi in explaining the success of fascist movements as the market system malfunctioned in the 1930s. In the book, Polanyi details the history of the market system’s implementation through his theory of the ‘double movement’. On one side there was a move by the rising trading class to expand free markets internationally under the guidance of the Gold Standard monetary system. On the other side was an immediate, spontaneous countermovement made up of a diversity of actors interested in protecting society from the devastating human and environmental consequences of marketization.12 This came in the form of trade unions, welfare legislation, agrarian tariffs, and central banking institutions. As Polanyi notes in The Great Transformation and elsewhere, the ensuing decades of ‘market society’ required a delicate balance between the dictates of laissezfaire, coordinated internationally by the Gold Standard monetary system, domestic ‘market’ economies, and popular government, where the socially protective interests of the countermovement increasingly held sway (Polanyi 2014b). Fascism would appear on a grand scale during the Great Depression as efforts were made internationally to maintain the market-based system in the face of increasing institutional paralysis and social dislocation. As Polanyi explains, by the 1930s the system and its institutional supports had become dangerously unstable, leading to an increasing clash between economic and political interests over how to handle the crisis. Pressures for austerity under the international monetary system obstructed democratic governments from making reforms to protect its workers and national industries. This prompted Great Britain and the United States to take their currencies off gold in the early 1930s, sending the international system into further chaos and state political systems into paralysis. Tensions increasingly mounted between competing sectoral interests and neither working classes, international financiers, nor nation-based industrial interests could gain the strength to implement their own plan for reform, paving the way for authoritarian responses. Economic disfunction begat political disfunction and threatened social collapse on a large scale. Polanyi notes the eventual moment when “[f]ear would grip the people, and leadership would be thrust upon those who offered an easy way out at whatever ultimate price” (2001: 244). It is out of this “perilous deadlock” of competing sociopolitical forces that fascism emerged, achieving overwhelming success in Italy and Germany but also housing active movements in many other countries. Polanyi suggests that fascism presented a functional solution to the crisis of market society, allowing nations a way to shield citizenries and industries alike from its perils and reintegrate its political and economic spheres. Industrial production and private ownership would be safeguarded while institutions of popular representation were abolished. In the end, Polanyi remarks, capitalism was preserved, but at the expense of democracy and market liberalism itself (2001: 245). 12 Polanyi describes the “avalanche of social dislocation” that came upon England with the introduction of labour markets, as people were separated from the land (turned into real estate) and forced to sell their labour by threat of starvation. Polanyi reasons that “no society could stand the effects of such a system of crude fictions even for the shortest stretch of time unless its human and natural substance as well as its business organization was protected against the ravages of this satanic mill” (2001: 76–77). 468 Theory and Society (2021) 50:463–487 One of the core takeaways from The Great Transformation is that ‘circumstances make fascism’. Fascism’s presence, along with strands of authoritarianism and populism, are a product of liberal capitalism’s instability, moving from latent to active phases in accordance with the system’s ability to function. Since the market system was worldwide in scope, the fascist ‘solution’ was also highly transportable, with Polanyi identifying various sized fascist movements across Europe, North America and Latin America and noting its acute success in countries with “unresolved national issues” (250). Polanyi’s reading of the phenomenon in the book also invites fascism to be compared in certain respects to other solutions for societal integration borne out of market malfunction such as Stalinism and New Deal Keynesianism, each of which to Polanyi had both a “strong executive” and autarkic (protectionist, self-sufficient) tendencies (Polanyi 2014b). When presented within Polanyi’s broader analysis, the perception can emerge that fascism, for all its horrors, was no more radical than the market system under which it appeared,13 in his words, a “peculiar” and “entirely unnatural” organization of economic life (2001: 257), with fascism itself serving as a “more dramatic” variant of the given political alternatives present at the time (32, 253). It is in this vein that Polanyi is typically applied in current analyses of neo-fascism and right-wing populism, with historical comparisons made to suggest that the anomic effects of neoliberal marketization have engendered political fallout to a point where we are once again in a “Polanyi moment” (Guinan and Hanna 2017; Kuttner 2018). Ominous parallels are drawn between Polanyi’s account of the market system’s breakdown in the 1930s and circumstances in the post-2008 financial crisis era, with both scenarios witnessing the coexistence of market-driven social and economic insecurities, liberal democracies beholden to austerity policies by transnational financial bodies, and palpable nationalist, authoritarian, and populist discontent. Yarrow (2017) refers to “an uncanny sense of déjà vu” when reading Polanyi’s analysis today (572), noting how tensions between market forces and democratic politics enhanced the appeal of radical politics both then and now (571). Block and Somers (2017) look at present phenomena such as Brexit and the election of Donald Trump and suggest that Polanyi would not be surprised that “once again the pursuit of a wildly wrongheaded global project of self-regulating free markets has generated commanding countermovements driven by extreme nationalist rhetoric, ethnic and immigrant hostility, class resentment toward elites, and contempt for democratic institutions” (380). In these analyses, Brexit, Trump, and the success of radical right-wing parties represent “inchoate” or “ambiguous” Polanyian countermovements to protect communities from economic insecurity and social exclusion wrought by financialization and neoliberal globalization (Pettifor 2017; Smith and Pettifor 2017; Sandbrook 2017; Harrison 2014). In these interpretations it is sometimes unclear whether fascism and neo-fascism are themselves considered as countermovements to marketization, or rather are an outcome of the political-economic stalemate caused by the double movement during the market system’s crisis periods (e.g., Atzmüller and Décieux 2019).14 13 Kenneth McRobbie (2005: 86) expresses a similar viewpoint, suggesting that Polanyi “criticized the capitalist market “utopia’ as being infinitely more radical than either of the two reactions to it, fascism or communism […]”. 14 My reading of Polanyi sees fascism as an outcome of the stasis caused by the double movement rather than a countermovement proper, though it might not be best framed as an either/or proposition. Theory and Society (2021) 50:463–487 469 The idea of fascism and populism as resurgent within a politically and economically unstable neo-liberal market system invites serious examination, as do the stark historical parallels drawn between Polanyi’s analysis in The Great Transformation and today. However, it is my contention that limiting Polanyi to what he said about fascism in The Great Transformation, as most of the above authors do, risks foreclosing the depth of his insight into fascism and its meaning for today. With the recent digitization of the Karl Polanyi Archive and release of earlier out-of-print essays and lectures (Polanyi 2018; Dale 2016a; Polanyi 2014a) scholars have begun to explore in more detail Polanyi’s writing on fascism outside of The Great Transformation. This includes several articles published in the 1930s in the journal New Britain, his 1935 essay “The Essence of Fascism”, as well as unfinished manuscripts such as “The Fascist Virus”. Early outcomes from this, however, appear to only build on and further confine Polanyi’s conceptualization of fascism to its political-economic utility as seen in The Great Transformation. Scholarly treatment of “The Essence of Fascism” is largely limited to its passages on how fascist ‘corporativism’ addresses the antagonism between laissez-faire economics and popular government, tying fascism to the broader incompatibility of democracy as a political superstructure for capitalism (Watkins and Seidelman 2019; Lacher 2019; Dale and Desan 2019; Atzmüller and Décieux 2019; Sandbrook 2018; Krippner 2017; Reynolds 2015). That essay’s discussion on vitalist philosophy and ‘racialism’, as well as its main premise, that fascism is based on the negation of a notion of human individualism that stretches back to the Christian doctrine of the ‘brotherhood of man’, are either unaddressed or underemphasized. This leads to theories that Polanyi saw fascism as a “congenital bias for reaction” within liberal capitalism (Morton 2018), or in Sandbrook’s adoption of Polanyi’s “Fascist Virus” analogy, a type of protective ‘influenza’ in capitalism that ranges from benign (right-wing populism) to malignant (fascism) based on the health of the market economy and its democratic structures (2017; 2018). In some cases, authors conflate fascism with populist and authoritarian nationalist movements, a position arguably at odds with The Great Transformation, or make the questionable claim that Polanyi saw a latent fascist tendency in all right-wing movements (i.e., Sandbrook 2018).15 In another account, a rather lean Polanyian conception of fascism is distilled such as in Lacher (2019) as “[r]egulated capitalism without democratic institutions” (689). Polanyi does state in The Great Transformation that fascism “was rooted in a market system that refused to function” (2001: 248), and the above authors are not wrong to emphasize this relationship. However, as I will show, restricting Polanyi’s view of fascism to its functional utility within capitalism artificially diminishes his understanding of the phenomenon’s meaning and importance (including how it differs from rightwing populism and authoritarianism), and consequently reduces Polanyi’s potential contribution toward understanding present developments. Part of this stems from the fact that Polanyi does not spend much time in The Great Transformation examining the contents of fascism, nor for that matter populism and authoritarianism, outside of the political and economic conditions that contributed to their rise. Polanyi makes allusions to fascism having a degenerate and transcendent character (2001: 30–31, 245), yet 15 Polanyi calls fascism “a revolutionary tendency directed as much against conservatism as against the competing revolutionary force of socialism”. However, he does acknowledge the alliances made between fascists and conservative elites in many places (2001: 246–24 470 Theory and Society (2021) 50:463–487 reveals little on its actual substance. To comprehend Polanyi’s multi-dimensional understanding, it is necessary to integrate the above analyses with his propositions elsewhere, particularly in his underexamined 1935 essay “The Essence of Fascism”, which the following sections of this paper will attempt to do. This is to ask: how does Polanyi’s account of fascism’s philosophy relate to his analysis of its structural causal factors? What insights does Polanyi’s full conception offer? Looking at Polanyi’s work as a whole, I argue that what emerges is a phenomenon that points to deeper sociological questions than the functioning of the market economy, speaking to fascism’s enduring relevance and its potential relationship to comparable political formations today. Uncovering the roots of fascist philosophy in “The Essence of Fascism” Despite going unrecognized through generations of fascism studies, Polanyi was both intellectually immersed as well as personally affected by fascism’s rise, publishing several articles on the phenomenon while emigrating from Hungary to Austria and then to England to escape persecution from fascist and authoritarian regimes. The culmination of his thinking during this period is embodied in the 1935 essay “The Essence of Fascism”, which appears in the volume Christianity and the Social Revolution. The book, which Polanyi helped edit, is a product of his association at the time with the Christian Left movement in England. As noted, “The Essence of Fascism” is not frequently discussed at length in the secondary literature on Polanyi and it is virtually nonexistent in the scholarship on fascism, despite some of its findings predating and surpassing conclusions reached in formative works on fascist ideology (e.g. Mosse 1966; Sternhell 1976; Payne 1980). In some respects, “The Essence of Fascism” complements Polanyi’s admittedly “bare outline” of fascism in The Great Transformation, aiding his explanation of its functional utility and causal conditions by drawing out the “institutional strains” of market society as evident of a broader crisis of democracy and capitalism (which he notes fascist leaders themselves grasp). The essay’s main purpose, however, is a dense exploration of fascism’s philosophical roots. Polanyi locates in the texts and speeches of fascist thinkers and politicians a philosophy based on a radical form of antiindividualism that operates on the interstices of two competing philosophical poles, ‘vitalism’ and ‘totalitarianism’ (which respectively amount to shrewd mischaracterizations of Nietzsche and Hegel). “The Essence of Fascism” challenges the notion that fascism has not produced a coherent or comprehensive philosophical system, as Polanyi’s examination finds a sophisticated theory of politics, economy, ‘sociology’, ontology and metaphysics. Polanyi argues that fascism attempts to transform society by abolishing its democratic institutions and then strives to change the very nature of human consciousness. The remainder of this section will attempt to distill and interpret Polanyi’s central ideas in the essay. Anti-individualism: fascism’s philosophical essence Polanyi presents anti-individualism as fascist philosophy’s central tenet and guiding principle, an observable thread that runs through the works of fascist intellectuals such Theory and Society (2021) 50:463–487 471 as Hans Prinzhorn, Alfred Bäumler, Alfred Rosenberg, as well as philosophers influential to fascism such as Oswald Spengler, Ludwig Klages and Othmar Spann. The anti-individualist position can be summarized as the determination to abolish “the idea of the person” as the foundational unit of society and to negate human relationships as constituting society’s fundamental basis (1935: 390). As Polanyi explains: “Fascist philosophy is an effort to produce a vision of the world in which society is not a relationship of persons. A society, in fact, in which there are either no conscious human beings or their consciousness has no reference to the existence and functioning of society” (370). Polanyi notes how, on the surface, fascist thinkers base their critiques against characterizations of the liberal ‘atomistic’ individual, akin to earlier refutations of individualism in Dostoevsky and Kierkegaard. However, the true nature of fascist anti-individualism, Polanyi argues, runs deeper and is revealed when examining fascism’s combined enmity towards liberalism, democracy and socialism. Here, Polanyi points out that liberalism, democracy and socialism are rooted in a similar conception of the individual, which he describes as the “equality of individuals as individuals” (1935: 366). Polanyi traces this back to the Christian doctrine of the ‘brotherhood of man’, where the belief is held that “because men have souls […] they have infinite value as individuals […] they are equals” (369–370). For Polanyi, this guarantees both the sanctity of the individual person and their equality within a community envisioned as a relationship of persons.16 Polanyi regards how this principle of “man and society as whole” is recognized in liberalism in the form of the equal rights of the individual. Socialism, rather than subordinating the individual,17 confirms and extends it from the political sphere to the economic sphere, while democracy “provides the political machinery” for this to take place (363). Polanyi suggests that fascist thinkers and politicians in Italy and Germany grasp the individualist link between liberalism, democracy and socialism and its connection to the spread of Christianity, pointing to examples where these ideas are espoused and renounced in Rosenberg, “reactionary aristocrat” Julius Evola, and in speeches by Mussolini and Hitler.18 Polanyi acknowledges that the incompatibility between fascism and Christianity does not always manifest itself as clearly in practice as it does philosophically,19 yet suggests that national socialism’s attack on both working-class 16 Polanyi suggests that the links between the value of individual and society as a whole are incontrovertible: “The discovery of the individual is the discovery of [humankind]. The discovery of the individual soul is the discovery of community. The discovery of equality is the discovery of society. Each is implied in the other” (1935: 370). 17 Polanyi describes socialism as “the heir to Individualism … the economic system under which the substance of Individualism can alone be preserved in the modern world” (365). This breaks from thinkers such as Hayek that place socialism in the same ‘illiberal’ category as fascism based on the thought that it negates the individual in favour of the ‘collective’ (e.g., The Road to Serfdom, Hayek 1944). 18 Polanyi also refers here to the work of Prinzhorn, Ernst Krieck, and Italian “Catholic fascist” Curzio Malaparte. 19 Polanyi concludes that many Western churches were “far from embodying the ideals of Christianity” and that churches who chose to cooperate with fascists further distanced themselves from their theological roots (1935: 361). 472 Theory and Society (2021) 50:463–487 movements and churches “is not mere coincidence” but rather “a symbolic expression” of fascist philosophy’s anti-individualist essence. He determines that churches which “have not ceased to be Christian” inevitably suffer oppression, also noting efforts by fascists to infuse pagan elements into Christianity, and the attempt by the Nazis to establish ‘positive Christianity’ as a counter-religion. Polanyi concludes that fascism “rightly asserts the correlatedness of the ideas of Individualism, Democracy and Socialism. It knows that either Christianity or Fascism must perish in the struggle” (1935: 373). Vitalism and totalitarianism: fascism’s philosophical poles Having established that fascist philosophy aims to negate the individual and the idea of society’s basis in human relationships, Polanyi goes on to pose a series of rhetorical questions concerning how a society is conceivable that is not a relationship of persons, asking: “[H]ow can economic life be possible? … How can power emerge, be controlled, and directed to useful ends, if there exists no individuals to express their wills or wishes? And what kind of human being is supposed to populate this society if this being is to possess no consciousness of itself and if its consciousness is not to have to effect of relating him to his fellows?” (371). In other words, what does fascism offer society as an alternative to individualism? Polanyi looks at two competing modes of thought that he sees iterations of fascism oscillating between and embodying in differing quantities. Both challenge individualism from different positions. On one side of the spectrum lies what Polanyi calls ‘vitalism’,20 a philosophy derived from Nietzsche and carried “to an appalling extreme” by later German philosopher Ludwig Klages.2122 Polanyi describes vitalism as ‘biocentric’, ‘orgiastic’, ‘instinctive’ and ‘irrational’, privileging the non-conscious functions of human life and reflecting Klages’ interest in the alleged unity of humanity in its surrounding environment in prehistoric times. At its core lies the distinction between ‘Body-Soul’ and ‘the Mind’. ‘Body’ and ‘Soul’23 are thought to coexist in a natural state of harmony with the soul acting as the body’s “psychological companion”. 20 Vitalism is occasionally referred to in scholarship on fascism, though its precise meaning is rarely specified (e.g. Griffin 2018). There is no entry for vitalism in the 2008 International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences nor the 2011 Encyclopedia of Political Science, though the word does appear in the latter’s entry on fascism. The 2019 Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy provides an entry for vitalism that concentrates on the term’s use in the natural sciences. 21 Paul Bishop writes that Klages was relegated to “the dustbin of history” until recently, calling him “one of the most original, and undeservedly neglected, thinkers of the twentieth century” (Bishop 2002; Bishop 2016). Klages is known to have coined the term ‘logocentrism’ and published in the fields of psychology and characterology. 22 Polanyi also detects elements of vitalist thought in the poems of D.H. Lawrence. 23 Polanyi places quotations around Klages’ ‘soul’ referring to it as a type of unconscious force that differs greatly from the meaning of ‘soul’ in Christianity, or even in Animist conceptions that at least signal the ability “to be conscious and endowed with an ability to communicate” (International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences 2008). Theory and Society (2021) 50:463–487 473 Together they comprise a set of functions limited to “the process of sensation”, “impulse to movement”, rudimentary contemplation and formation of mental images (1935: 378). For Klages, these qualities constitute “genuine” human vitality in its entirety. The ‘Mind’ on the other hand, stands apart. Seen as the embodiment of human consciousness, the ‘Mind’ acts as an “extraneous and life-destroying principle” whose functions – volition, conscience, ethics, apprehension – disrupt primordial ‘Body-Soul’ harmony and sap human vitality. Polanyi explains Klages’ position as such: “[The Mind] is an inimical irruption into the Body-Soul world; in fact, a disease […] With its occurrence, consciousness starts. The Ego emerges. The “Soul” is gripped by the Mind, becomes a person – a form of parasitism on Life in which the “Soul” is reduced to a mere satellite of the Ego” (378). According to Polanyi, Klages indicts the rational, conscious person as a parasite on life itself, advocating instead for a state of “harmony untroubled by moral conscience” (1935: 385). Polanyi suggests Klages arrived at this position by isolating the vitalist elements in Nietzsche’s philosophy from its individualist or spiritual undercurrents. This means privileging the primeval ‘Blond Beast’ from On the Genealogy of Morals while discarding the ‘Übermensch’ and, most significantly, the “will to power” as Nietzsche’s essence of human vitality.24 Klages, in contrast, sees all purposive instincts such as ‘will’ or ‘domination’ as destructive properties of the ‘Mind’ and thus antithetical to vitality.25 What is left in Klages’ vitalism is a structure of consciousness reduced to the plane of “animal or vegetative life”, where humans have no ego and selfrealization does not exist “because there is no self”. Polanyi describes Klages’ subject as such: “The tide of consciousness does not reach out towards the faculty of intelligence […] No vapour of the Mind hovers over the surface of the Soul. Life is immediate, like touch […] Blood and soil are the metaphysical nourishment of this almost corporeal body-soul” (1935: 372–373).26 The attributes of vitalism meet their anthesis on the other side of fascism’s ideological spectrum, ‘totalitarianism’. Polanyi arrives at totalitarianism by translating Othmar Spann’s term ganzheitslehre, noting that another close synonym would be ‘universalism’.27 In this philosophy, Polanyi finds a ‘post-conscious’, ‘post-historic’, ‘logocentric’ mode of existence where the individual is all-but-eliminated except for the ‘Mind’, 24 Klages charges that Nietzsche “unwittingly reaffirmed Christianity in disguise” in supporting the ‘will to power’. Despite Nietzsche’s aversion to Christianity, Klages felt that Nietzsche’s philosophical ethics were nonetheless built on a similar set of principles. 25 It can be argued that Nietzsche did not view ‘will’ in this way, but rather as something primordial that transcends rational thought. In The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche appears to associate ‘Will’ to “the metaphysical in relation to all that is physical in the world, the thing-in-itself in relation to all appearances” (Nietzsche 1999: 77). Polanyi nonetheless makes the case that Klages read Nietzsche’s ‘will to power’ as distinctly human and purposive, building a philosophy around its negation. 26 Polanyi sees the Nazi translation of this in Prinzhorn’s theory of community as a “fixed sequence of devouring”: an order of things where “perfect harmony reigns” in the mutual assurance that “every animal is certain to end in the belly of another animal”, which is thought to be a feature of animal life in its natural environment (380). 27 Searches in Google Ngram indicate that the term ‘totalitarianism’ had rarely appeared in English-language publications prior to “The Essence of Fascism”, though Polanyi had begun using the term in lectures in 1933 (e.g., Polanyi 1933). 474 Theory and Society (2021) 50:463–487 which escapes subjectivity to become embodied in the whole or ‘totality’. Similar to vitalism, the individual subject is erased, and society-in-personal relationships abrogated. In this case however, instead of Klages’ pre-conscious ‘Body-Soul’, one’s sense of self and relationship to others is preserved but re-orientated entirely through ‘objectivities’, outside entities such as state, religion, or capital. As Polanyi explains: “Society which is the realm of Totality has not persons for its units. The Political, the Economic, the Cultural, the Aristocratic, the Religious, etc., are the units; persons are not related to one another except through the medium of that sphere of Totality which compromises them both” (373). To illustrate this theory, Polanyi notes its underpinnings in capitalism as industrial production and market exchange relations mature. Drawing on Marx’s critique28 and anticipating his own analysis of fictitious commodification in The Great Transformation, Polanyi argues that the division of labour makes human relationships less immediate and direct as workers become related to the product produced and less to each other. In a developed market society these relations are further depersonalized and ‘objectified’, becoming expressed through the exchange value of commodities. Consequently, commodities themselves become objective and ‘thing-like’. Taking on a semblance of life, “they follow their own laws […] and seem to be masters of their own destiny” (1935: 375). For Polanyi, the “pseudo-life” of the commodity is not illusion but instead: “[T]he reality of a condition of affairs in which man has been estranged from himself. Part of his self is embodied in these commodities which now possess a strange self-hood of their own. The same holds true of all social phenomena in Capitalism, whether it be the State, Law, Labour, Capital, or Religion” (375). Spann’s totalitarianism is the farthest realization of this state of affairs, with all group action, economic and private life mediated though outside social phenomena. Even friendship is no longer “an immediate relationship between two persons” but the relation of each to an outside concept of “Friendship” (1935: 373). As Polanyi exclaims, in totalitarianism: “[n]othing personal has here substance unless it be objectified, i.e. has become impersonal” (373). The content of one’s subjective experience is replaced by a “colourless semi-translucent objectivity”, personal existence “merely the shadow of a shadow” (374). Society in this realm becomes a “vast mechanism of intangible entities, of Mind-Stuff […] a world of spectres in which everything seems to possess life except human beings” (374). Polanyi describes how Spann arrived at this through Hegel’s theory of Absolute Mind,29 arguing that similar to Klages’ shrewd vulgarization of Nietzsche, Spann 28 Here Polanyi appears to be borrowing from Marx’s theory of alienation, but does not refer to it specifically. Absolute Mind is the final stage of Hegel’s Philosophy of Mind, the idea of “mind as such”, applicable but distinct to any individual human mind or historical or social settings. It is best exemplified in art, religion and philosophy (Inwood 2007). Polanyi suggests that Spann replaces ‘Mind’ with ‘Totality’ (1935: 370). 29 Theory and Society (2021) 50:463–487 475 isolates (and radicalizes) the totalizing elements in Hegel’s philosophy while removing his dialectic method, in turn eliminating all its emancipatory dynamics. What is left is a static condition where human beings are entrapped in their self-estrangement. In this form of totalitarianism Polanyi observes a “new kind of metaphysical justification of capitalism” (374), as with no foothold for the individual in society, capitalism can come to be seen as “not only right but eternal” (376). Polanyi concludes that: “[M]an in its totality is not a person; it is a hapless body devoid of consciousness. There is no freedom and there is no change. It may be doubted whether a more complete absence of self-determination in society was ever conceived” (376). From philosophy to systemic form Polanyi describes the measure of polarity and symbiosis that exists between ‘preconscious’ vitalism and ‘post-conscious’ totalitarianism. In one, “history has not yet started”, in the other it has ended. In vitalism “there is no necessity of change”, in totalitarianism, “no possibility” for it. The first looks to return to a mythological past, while the other marks the “apotheosis of the inhuman present” (1935: 382). Polanyi concludes: “If there is one thing that could justify either of them, it is the appalling alternative presented by the other” (382). Yet both vitalism and totalitarianism align in their negation of the active individual subject and of society as a conscious relationship of persons. As Polanyi puts it, in vitalism “the person is not yet been born into society” whereas in totalitarianism “he has already been absorbed in it” (382). Fascist thought, “as a rule” according to Polanyi, is in continuous oscillation between the two extremes. “The Essence of Fascism” moves on to discuss how this radically anti-individualist philosophy becomes realized in societal settings. To this end, Polanyi briefly introduces some secondary concepts, the first of which is ‘racialism’, which he argues is used by the Nazis as a “substitute for the nation”. Polanyi finds it noteworthy that that neither vitalism nor totalitarianism possess a racial or national component,30 noting as well that both Nietzsche and Hegel “were emotionally anti-nationalist” (1935: 383). The racialism employed by fascists via Aryan mythology has a distinctly anti-individualist purpose and is also totalitarian by Polanyi’s own definition, as one becomes bound to an obtuse, malleable representation of ‘the blood’ or ‘race’ rather than to any form of kinship with persons of said ‘race’. Polanyi suggests that Nazi racialism is not necessarily biological. While often identified with ancestry and physical features, its race concept “is just as often regarded as consisting of various different elements”, making it easier “to graft Nationalism onto the race theory than would otherwise be the case” (386–87). ‘Pseudo-mysticism’ is another way that Polanyi sees fascists adapt their anti-personal philosophy to modern settings, solving the problem of how to “give a meaning to my life without finding it in that of the other?” (1935: 383).31 Polanyi suggests that pseudo-mysticism also addresses the “need for rationality” in a machineage capitalist society, without “re-establishing the person” (382), and can serve as an outlet for religious and aesthetic emotions “safe from any aberration into ethics” (384). 30 Polanyi notes that Klages “claims the discovery of anthropological laws of the general validity” while Spann’s employment of the Mind Objective “cannot stop short of mankind” as a whole (1935: 383). 31 Polanyi describes mysticism as “the communion of God and Man […] he is separated by Eternity from his fellow. Mystic experience encompasses the whole universe except my neighbour” (1935: 384). 476 Theory and Society (2021) 50:463–487 Polanyi closes out “The Essence of Fascism” by delving into fascism’s sociological character and systemic form. Here, fascism’s anti-individualist and totalitarian roots are again apparent, as Polanyi describes a social order “which rules out the dependence of the whole on the conscious will and purpose of the individuals constituting it” (1935: 392).32 The corresponding political system is ‘corporative’ capitalism, a theory of state Polanyi views as best expressed in Spann’s philosophy and observable to varying degrees in the regimes of Italy, Germany and Austria. Under this system, Polanyi explains, democratic parties and institutions are dissolved, with major branches of industry recognized as corporations and endowed with the bulk of political responsibilities within their respective spheres. He draws out the anti-individualist implications of the ‘corporative’ state: “Neither the ideas and values nor the numbers of human beings involved find expression in it” (393). Social life, Polanyi explains, becomes organized on a vocational basis, where the complexity of humans is reduced to the recognition of their function “as producers, and as producers alone” (393). Polanyi notes here how fascist movements maneuver to preserve capitalism at the expense of democracy and liberalism, first by posing as liberal capitalism’s “sworn enemy”, equating it with individualism, then diverting popular resentment toward democracy and socialism. This, according to Polanyi, allows capitalism to escape “unscathed” and continue in a non-liberal form (1935: 367). The corporative social system, “authoritarian and nationalist” in nature, is designed to eliminate “the possibility of its reversion to democracy” and thus any tendency to develop towards socialism (367, 390–91). In the final instance fascist corporativism attempts to transform the very nature of human consciousness to deny any “conscious will and purpose of individuals” towards the community (394).33 Hitler and Mussolini, Polanyi reckons, envision a lengthy transition to this final state, as both are reticent on the degree to which their people, who have known democracy, are ready for corporative citizenship. Near the chapter’s end, Polanyi moves closer to his analysis in other early work and anticipates some of the conclusions reached in The Great Transformation. He singles out the “mutual incompatibility of democracy and capitalism” as being at the root of the social crisis of the 1930s, and suggests that only two solutions are present, either “the extension of the democratic principle from politics to economics” through socialism or “the abolition of the Democratic ‘political sphere’ altogether” (1935: 392).34 In the second instance, “only economic life remains; Capitalism as organised in the different branches of industry becomes the whole of society. This is the fascist solution” (392). Writing in 1935, Polanyi concludes that the latter had yet to be fully realized, though he suggests that German national socialism had gone the farthest toward achieving it. 32 This is opposed to socialism where there is an “increase of responsibility of the individual for his share in the whole”, with the state’s organs working toward institutional realization of this end (1935: 392–93). 33 A strand of individualism does persist under corporativism, but it is the “individualism of unequals” (369). 34 Polanyi shows that Hitler and Mussolini have a similar grasp of this, noting Mussolini saying that “only an authoritative state can deal with the contradictions inherent in capitalism”, and a Düsseldorf speech by Hitler on the incompatibility of democratic equality in politics and private property of the means of production (391–392). Theory and Society (2021) 50:463–487 477 Further analysis: Fascism as symptom of a deeper moral crisis Recapping the main arguments in “The Essence of Fascism”, fascist thinkers have identified (correctly in Polanyi’s mind) that liberalism, democracy, and socialism derive from a similar interpretation of the individual and society, rooted in the Christian affirmation of the ‘brotherhood of man’. Fascist philosophy sets forth to replace these ideologies and reconfigure society by negating the idea of the individual as its prime unit and of human relationships as constituting society’s fundamental substance. Fascist anti-individualism oscillates between two competing philosophical poles (vitalism and totalitarianism) that either pre-empt or transcend the conscious individual and draw diverging visions of a society that is “not a relationship of persons”. Fascist movements, particularly national socialism, use a fictive concept of racial superiority to forge a nationalist principle and take on a ‘corporative’ state character, spelling the end of liberalism, socialism, and democracy but not necessarily capitalism. Fascists then attempt to violently rearrange human consciousness to function under these circumstances. One might question Polanyi’s centering in “The Essence” of two obscure philosophers (Klages and Spann) that are themselves absent in major studies of fascism, while at the same time omitting more recognized intellectual influences such as Giovanni Gentile, who was also a keen student of Hegel. Others might ask “why vitalism?” “why totalitarianism?”, or more simply “why are fascists anti-individualist?” Polanyi’s elucidation of these concepts is compelling, yet it is left unclear in the text as to why fascists adopt them. If the point behind Polanyi’s privileging of anti-individualism is to establish that fascism denies the fundamental equality of human beings, as indicated twice in the essay (366, 370), then his analysis is salient but hardly groundbreaking, and moreover would seem to blur the distinctions Polanyi himself aims to set between fascism and forms of reactionary conservatism. Part of my argument is that Polanyi saw fascism responding to sociological problems that run deeper than the functioning of the market-based system. Connectedly, I believe there is a larger significance to his foregrounding of fascist anti-individualism. Drawing this out requires additional analytical work and textual comparison. As I noted previously, in The Great Transformation Polanyi emphasizes the importance of circumstances to fascism, that it was foremost “a political movement that responded to the needs of an objective situation” (2001: 245). The “objective situation” in that book the is the breakdown of the market economy and its political and economic institutions. This is the arena in which fascism emerges, and it is where most current applications of Polanyi in the study of neo-fascism and right-wing populism are situated. In “The Essence of Fascism” a different, if not related, set of circumstances is presented. Here, Polanyi describes the society of his time as not being, or at least no longer entirely being “a relationship of persons”. This extends to a deeper crisis, perhaps expressed most clearly by Polanyi (n.d.) in an unfinished text from the 1930s entitled “Fascism and Socialism”. In it, Polanyi firstly notes that fascist movements are devoted to rectifying the functional crisis between modern society’s political and economic institutions. But he then explains: “There is also a moral crisis which runs parallel to the political and economic. The meaning of individual life and the freedom of personality, has become a 478 Theory and Society (2021) 50:463–487 problem […] We cannot link up the effects of our life and actions. Fullness of individual life is impossible.” (Polanyi n.d.) Understanding this additional crisis to which fascism responds involves looking closer at what Polanyi means by “fullness of individual life” and “freedom of personality”. As evidenced in “The Essence of Fascism”, Polanyi is influenced by Judeo-Christian ideas of the individual. Embedded in this is the belief that one has the capacity to be morally answerable for their actions and to exempt themselves from situations that compromise one’s moral integrity. This freedom gives meaning to the life of the individual-insociety. Yet, as Polanyi hints at in the passage above, in a modern capitalist society the ability to “link up the effects of our life and actions” becomes compromised, as one’s needs are bound to a complex, interdependent network of largely unknown actors (Rotstein 1990). The “social effects of our individual life” are neither legible nor controllable (Polanyi n.d., 3). In a 1930s essay entitled “The Meaning of Peace”, Polanyi describes the “inescapable nature” of modern society: “Power, economic value, coercion, are inevitable […] there is no means for the individual to escape the responsibilities of choosing between alternatives. He or she cannot contract out of society” (2014c: 84). Polanyi’s idea of the individual also rests on the innate need to develop and maintain community (Dale 2016b: 3). Here, his conception is most clearly influenced by the ‘social personalism’ in the work of Scottish philosopher John Macmurray, an intellectual compatriot of Polanyi’s. Macmurray’s has been described as the ‘thick’ view of the person, emphasizing humankind’s inherently mutual and communal qualities (Sterenberg 2019; Bevir and O’Brien 2003). In the epilogue Macmurray wrote for Christianity and the Social Revolution, he describes the individual and society as “correlative terms” and explains that the essence of social life exists in “the impulse to achieve fellowship and human community for its own sake” (Macmurray 1935: 520, 521–522). Both Macmurray and Polanyi believe that this “impulse” to enter community precedes both coordinated economic activity and political organization.35 While he does not explicitly state it, it is not hard to deduce that Polanyi sees this ‘social’ aspect of the individual as severely compromised, noting in “The Essence of Fascism” how the division of labour and development of commodity exchange in a mature market society result in human relationships that are less direct, immediate, and “for their own sake”. Under these additional circumstances – of the individual’s restrained inner moral freedom and impulse to community – the relevance of fascist anti-individualism is put in sharper relief, as is the significance in vitalism and totalitarianism to negate entirely the idea of society as a relationship of persons. Both philosophies respond directly and distinctively to Polanyi’s ‘moral crisis’: in vitalism, a degraded state of social personality and moral freedom is not an issue since in Klages’ philosophy no conscious persons ought to exist. In totalitarianism, Spann’s solution is to carry the existing problem of depersonalized social relations in a market society to its logical endpoint, where all aspects of social life become fully mediated through outside phenomena. In both philosophies, the compromised individual-in-society is relieved of enduring the business of trying to honour a sense of moral integrity or inherent sociality under 35 In “The Meaning of Peace”, Polanyi states: “Neither institutions nor customs, nor laws, but community as a relationship of persons was the substance of social existence” (2014c: 84). Theory and Society (2021) 50:463–487 479 conditions that do not support its flourishing. The theory of the fascist corporative state resolves this problem to its fullest extent, eliminating entirely the individual’s share or responsibility to the well-being of the collective. This discrepancy between humankind’s “essential nature and actual existence” (Macmurray 1935: 517) could be interpreted to represent for Polanyi the foundational sociological problem behind fascism’s emergence.36 It is one to which fascist antiindividualism ultimately serves to address. The problem of individual integrity and “persons in relation” does connect to the problem of market society in The Great Transformation, albeit a more permanent condition that is less tied to economic cycles. In Polanyi’s view, the solution to avoid fascism was to alter society’s political and economic institutions to allow for a fuller expression of personal relationships in community. This is to “unite society” by embedding the economic system within a politics of democratic egalitarianism, as seen in Polanyi’s conception of socialism, with institutions reformed so as to facilitate “the conscious and responsible participation of the people” (2014b: 201). Instead of endeavoring to achieve a state of living for its realization, fascism largely lets existing political and economic arrangements stand and rather works to alter the nature of human consciousness itself. To summarize my analysis, we see in Polanyi’s conception that fascism emerges in response to two critical problems in a liberal capitalist society: The first involves the instability of the market system. It is symptomatic of a broader incompatibility between capitalist production and democratic political institutions, and at the root of it, the problem of a society that has been reoriented to serve the interests of the market economy. The second problem connects to the first: a crisis of the individual in modern capitalism, where the capacity for moral autonomy and to realize the impulse for community is lost due to the disruption of society as a “relationship of persons”. The relevance of the latter problem under neoliberalism appears highly evident to this reader, adding depth to reignited questions over fascism. I will reflect more on the contemporary relevance of Polanyi’s perspective after first considering how this theory as a whole contributes to existing knowledge on fascism. Fitting Polanyi’s theory into the fascism studies cannon and its broader implications When putting Polanyi’s writings together, a conceptualization of fascism emerges that accounts for both the systemic pressures it responds to (i.e., its political and economic function in a market society as seen in The Great Transformation) as well as fascism’s guiding philosophies and outward sociological characteristics. It is a largely unique contribution to the study of fascism that addresses ambiguities and intervenes in several debates within the scholarship at large.37 Among these is the lasting stalemate between Marxists and non-Marxists on fascism’s relationship to capitalism, and in connection, the extent to which it should be seen as a radically transformative phenomenon (Griffin 2018). On this matter, Polanyi initially appears to contradict himself in early writings 36 In a mid-1930s document of the Christian Left signed by both Polanyi and Macmurray it is stated simply: “The particular questions of our political and economic life are also in every case problems of the relationship of persons to one another” (Costello 2002: 258). 37 Goldfrank has described Polanyi’s explanation of fascism as a “radical alternative” that complements both liberal and Marxian approaches yet is “grander in its historical vision” (1990: 88, 89). 480 Theory and Society (2021) 50:463–487 where he describes “the very raison d’être of Fascism is that it keeps the present economic system going”, while in the next sentence calling it “an historical earthquake […] the most thoroughgoing and complete break in the social system since the great revolutions of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries” (1934b: 128). To Polanyi, both things are ultimately true. He criticizes Marxists for denying fascism’s radical character, suggesting they are too economistic in their outlook to recognize its vast societal implications (2014c). At the same time, Polanyi agrees with them on fascism’s importance to the functioning of capitalism and in maintaining ruling class privilege. From Polanyi’s perspective, both Marxists and liberals are each partially correct: Fascism does serve as a ‘reactionary’ political superstructure for capitalism when market society falters, albeit with the radical aim to create a new society that breaks with Western interpretations of the individual-in-humankind stretching back 2000 years. From this view, generations of studies are guilty of failing to comprehend fascism in its full scope. Polanyi also counters historians such as Paxton (2004) that consider fascism to be an incoherent or doctrineless ideology. In contrast, Polanyi marvels at fascism’s comprehensiveness, suggesting that its assertions and propositions “are more startling than anything which Radicals of the Left have ever produced”.38 Certain aspects of Polanyi’s conception do align with current trends in comparative neo-fascism studies. Polanyi takes fascism seriously as a genus of ideology with many complex variants (based on the interaction between vitalism, totalitarianism, and specific national contexts), with German national socialism for him representing the most fully developed prototype.39 His examination of fascist writings and speeches in “The Essence of Fascism” also predates by several decades the ‘empathetic’ turn in fascism studies (Mosse 1999), which challenged a longstanding bias against “taking fascist texts seriously as a source of understanding the fascist world-view and goals” (Griffin 2018: 32). Where Polanyi perhaps most controversially breaks with contemporary studies is in displacing the importance of nationalism, as consensus now exists over ultranationalism being part of fascism’s ‘ineliminable core’ (Griffin 2018). In “The Essence of Fascism” nationalism is instead presented as something that was more germane to the political climate of interwar Europe, to which fascists along with other movements had to formulate an answer. In The Great Transformation, Polanyi goes farther, referring to fascists adopting a “sham nationalism” at the movement phase, using it as a stepping-stone to power where it was immediately shed in favour of a non-national imperialism (2001: 250). He also gives examples of fascist movements that were principally non-nationalist.40 In other places, Polanyi tempers this by acknowledging that fascists achieved particular success in countries with “unresolved national issues”, and that their take-up of nationalist priorities in order to seize power “reinforced one another and created the impression of essential similarity” 38 Polanyi notes that revolutionary socialism is “but a different formulation […] of truths generally accepted in Western Europe for almost two thousand years”. Fascism, on the other hand, “is their denial” (1935: 371). 39 This leaves Polanyi prone to criticism on equating of Nazism with fascism (i.e. Gregor 2006; de Felice 1977). Polanyi acknowledges that he “may seem to over-stress the importance of the German developments” but that “it is to National Socialism we must turn to discover the political and philosophical characteristics of a full-fledged Fascism.” (1935: 359–60). Later scholars such as Mosse (1966) would concur with Polanyi’s position. 40 Here, he cites Huey Long’s movement in Louisiana and other movements in Holland and Norway (2001: 249). Theory and Society (2021) 50:463–487 481 (250). However, for Polanyi, fascism’s true aim was social, transcending objectives related to the re-creation of national unity (e.g., Sternhell 1976). For proponents of the ultranationalist interpretation, Polanyi at the very least serves a reminder that nationalism (or for that matter racism) was not the exclusive province of fascism in interwar Europe, and that those analyzing neo-fascism might want to avoid overdetermining its explanatory capacity. To Polanyi, there is no uniform rule on how fascism will exhibit racist, nationalist, or antisemitic traits, as varied strains and permutations are instead linked though their shared antiindividualism. In terms of racism, Polanyi does not write it out of the picture, but similar to nationalism, he treats it as a secondary characteristic. While not foundational to fascist philosophy, racial superiority nonetheless plays a pivotal role for Polanyi in fascism’s translation to social settings.41 Others suggest that Polanyi either missed or downplayed the importance of racism (Reynolds 2015; Dale 2016b; Costello 2002). Costello found the lack of references to antisemitism in “The Essence of Fascism” “conspicuous”, noting that Polanyi’s Jewish heritage and recent escape from Vienna would have made him aware of the increasingly genocidal behaviour of the Nazis towards Jews. Costello moreover suggests that Polanyi left some work behind in not looking deeper into the meaning of Jewish persecution, as it was the Hebrew tradition that spawned the philosophy of “universal brotherhood” that fascists were aligned against (2002: 234). While Polanyi’s concept of ‘racialism’ in “The Essence of Fascism” is arguably underdeveloped, his depiction of its ever-shifting characteristics does fit with contemporary theories of racism’s often transient character, cutting across (and embodying in different ways) stereotypes related to biology, ethnicity, religion, culture and ancestry (e.g., Puar 2014; Jiwani 2006; Medovoi 2012). It is also worth noting that Polanyi had little regard for other characteristics foregrounded in studies of fascism such as the significance of a charismatic leader (as featured in Nolte’s ‘fascist minimum’), nor does he place much importance on the size or potency of fascist movements in determining fascism’s success in achieving power.42 In The Great Transformation, Polanyi argues that the existence of a fascist movement proper was not necessarily one of the symptoms of a country about to turn fascist.43 The answer to fascism’s interwar rise is better seen in the conditions of market society. Moreover, fascism’s social implications are also not necessarily to be found in the outward appearance of the movements but rather in their underlying philosophical essence (Polanyi 1934a). Polanyi’s most unique contribution to fascism scholarship is in placing antiindividualism at its foundation, skillfully displaying how it runs from fascism’s philosophical core down through the movement level, and is distilled finally in the ideal type of the ‘corporative state’.44 There are other studies of fascism that include antiindividualism in their taxonomy of characteristics (e.g. Mosse 1966; Sternhell 1976) 41 Polanyi cites the importance of the ‘racial-national’ principle which successful fascist movements use to ccounter the Christian paradigm of the ‘individual and mankind’ in liberal democracy and socialism (1935: 388). 42 Polanyi cautions readers that: “To imagine that it was the strength of the movement which created situations such as these, and not to see that it was the situation that gave birth in this case to the movement, is to miss the outstanding lesson of the past decades” (2001: 247). 43 Polanyi notes that fascism achieved power in countries where the movement was large (Germany), small (Italy) and nonexistent (Spain) (2001: 246). 44 The existence of the fascist corporatist state is supported in later literature (e.g. Cerasi 2017) though there is debate over whether corporatism occurred in Nazi Germany or how it was compatible with Nazi ideology (Neumann 2017). Polanyi does convincingly link corporatism to Nazism as different manifestations of antiindividualism. 482 Theory and Society (2021) 50:463–487 but they stay at the level of fascism’s critique of liberal ‘atomistic’ individualism, and none centre it in importance.45 In other texts, anti-individualism is downplayed significantly (e.g. Payne 1980; Gregor 2006). For Polanyi, anti-individualism is the common denominator among fascist movements and serves as “the invisible border-line dividing fascism from all other shades and variants of reactionary anti-Socialism” (Polanyi 1935: 365). Polanyi’s reading of anti-individualism-as-foundation could work to reduce definitional ambiguity, allowing fascism to be delineated from seemingly likeminded movements (right-wing populist, nationalist and authoritarian conservative) where the notion of abolishing the individual subject is not of central import nor even tangibly present. At the same time anti-individualism could provide a key for locating a fascist common thread among diverse and seemingly unrelated movements (e.g., as in Ross 2017). Useful as that might be, I have attempted to demonstrate that there is more to Polanyi’s anti-individualism than in identifying what may or may not be fascist. Polanyi did not write anything on fascism after 1944, and it remains unclear what he thought about its continued relevance.46 However, there is a strong resonance in Polanyi’s depictions of both fascism’s ‘essence’ and its causal conditions that suggests a more enduring vulnerability to forms of fascism under liberal capitalist arrangements.47 Scholars have turned to Polanyi’s work to explain the success of current farright and right-wing populist movements, making inroads for understanding how political and economic conditions under neoliberalism might lay the groundwork for forms of fascist ‘solutions’ today (Atzmüller and Décieux 2019; Lacher 2019; Sandbrook 2018; Block and Somers 2017). This can now be joined by a larger debate over the problem of the freedom and integrity of the individual in conjunction with its political and economic arrangements, and whether or not individualism is in some ways inimical to capitalism.48 To this reader, this second state of affairs – i.e. what kind of subject is supposed to exist and flourish in liberal capitalism – is perhaps the quintessential question emerging from a Polanyian exploration of fascism. It persists even in times when the “delicate balance” between the functioning of the market economy and political democracy is being maintained (Polanyi 2014b: 187). In his later life, Polanyi would increasingly view the problem of inner freedom and obfuscated social relationships as bound to the technological systems humans have become dependent on, rather than the effects of the market principle (Rotstein 1957). As Abraham Rotstein reflects, the dense networks of communications, transportation and bureaucratic surveillance (lying mostly beyond our scope of comprehension) “form a medium of an entirely different kind, more rigid and not easily amenable to institutional containment” (Rotstein 2014: 11). It is a situation that signals the continued relevance of the ideas 45 In The Road to Serfdom, Hayek privileges anti-individualism. However, he sees it operating in equal measure in fascism and socialism (leading to a decidedly different reading of fascism than Polanyi’s). 46 In his “Weekend Notes” discussions in the 1950s with Abraham Rotstein, Polanyi’s specific allusions to fascism remain within the interwar time period. See “Notes of Weekend with Karl Polanyi” I-XXXIV, 1956– 1958, Karl Polanyi Archive, Container 45, File 2–20. 47 This is to say that I see Polanyi’s concepts as generally applicable to societies today and not bound to the periodization of his analyses. For an extended discussion on this issue, see Dale (2012) and Worth (2013). 48 This could connect the problem of fascism, and Polanyi’s view of the individual, to the wider philosophical critique of subjectivity in postmodern or ‘post’-liberalism, on whether aspects of Western-influenced concepts of individual consciousness ought to be preserved and the potential consequences of their disavowal (e.g., Derrida, Foucault, Ricoeur). Theory and Society (2021) 50:463–487 483 of vitalism and totalitarianism or any kind of social theory that displaces or deemphasizes the individual subject. For the Polanyian reader, this presents a new challenge in that, in addition to confronting marketization, the countermovement must also consider how to render social relations transparent, direct, and immediate in a complex technological society. This is to extend the Polanyian rubric beyond markets and society to ask in what ways is society upended to serve technological advancement, and to seek ways in which technology (in addition to markets) can be made to serve human needs. When looking at its contemporary forms, such as in Aleksandr Dugin’s (2012) ‘national bolshevist’ adaptation of Heidegger’s critique, it is evident that fascist thinkers remain doggedly attached to these types of questions. Conclusion This paper has aimed to reconcile Karl Polanyi’s thoughts on the rise of fascism in The Great Transformation with his array of lesser-known writings and unpublished work, in order to map out his theory of fascism and determine its relevance to existing knowledge and debates over fascism’s contemporary resurgence. What emerges in Polanyi is a far-reaching and largely original conception of fascism’s philosophical roots, functional utility and societal character that both adheres to, refutes, and modifies key tenets of liberal and Marxian interpretations of fascism (Goldfrank 1990). Polanyi’s view of fascism as a social force driven by a radically anti-individualist philosophy allows for the phenomenon to be better articulated from populist, conservative, and nationalist movements. Moreover, his depiction of variants of fascism operating on an ideological spectrum between ‘vitalism’ and ‘totalitarianism’ offers an explanation for why attempts to find a generic, consistent definition of fascism have been so fraught (Payne 1980). In Polanyi’s estimation, no single fascist movement exhibits a static or uniform set of quantities (this includes nationalism and racism). Instead, varied ‘fascisms’ exhibit different totalitarian and vitalist traits and can be linked through their shared anti-individualism. Polanyi’s perspective also illustrates how fascism attaches to deeper sociological problems; circumstances that range from the global functioning of the market-based economy (itself a “radical, unprecedented” innovation) to flaws in the liberal conception of the individual subject. Fascist movements present a ‘solution’ during crisis points in the market system, offering a political superstructure for capitalism, and take on various guises to serve the needs of the economic status quo, such as in Polanyi’s analysis of interwar Europe. In its philosophical form, fascism connects to a deeper, and I would argue, more enduring issue in liberal capitalism at the individual and moral level, where society at the level of personal relations is not legible; within it, one’s capacity for self-realization and sense of moral autonomy is impaired. Polanyi challenges consensus views within fascism studies on the explanatory power of nationalism and on the role of racism (despite not adequately accounting for its devastating impact), provoking us to consider whether anti-individualism might be a better, or at least equally relevant way to interpret movements deemed fascist. Future work might compare Polanyi’s theory with other important studies of fascism, which this paper has only had space to briefly address (e.g., Mosse 1966; Payne 1980; Griffin 1991; Ross 2017). It would also be illuminating to compare Polanyi’s rendering 484 Theory and Society (2021) 50:463–487 of totalitarian philosophy with later studies, for instance, with what Arendt uncovered in The Origins of Totalitarianism on how the breakdown of class membership revealed the “concomitant loneliness of the individual” and their lack of normal social relationships (Arendt 1968: 15). Arendt also suggests that totalitarian rulers (similar to in Polanyi’s reading) understood that their success required removing their subjects’ sense of private morality as well as all forms of communal bonds and common cultural interests “for their own sake” (1968: 36, 20). I have made a case for reading Polanyi in a way that speaks to fascism’s continued relevance beyond its specific political and economic utility. I caution against constraining Polanyi to his account of market society’s downfall in The Great Transformation, which can lead to reducing his conception of fascism to a form of authoritarian capitalism (e.g., Morton 2018; Lacher 2019). Polanyi is famously quoted for saying “we must revert to Ricardian England”, i.e., the birthplace of the market economy, to comprehend fascism (2001: 32). However, to stop there is to ignore the depth and uniqueness of his perspective. In terms of present circumstances, there would be considerable value in operationalizing Polanyi’s theory of fascism toward locating and elucidating the ideologies behind fascism’s contemporary offshoots. This could take Polanyi’s method in “The Essence of Fascism” by examining speeches and writings of contemporary thinkers, as well as content analyses of social media platforms. Others might stray from the study of fascism itself and toward its wider contributing circumstances. This is to examine what it is about the deeper character of society that leads to recurring ‘fascist tendencies’ and forge credible alternatives, something Polanyi himself viewed as the best defense against fascism. Acknowledgements I would like to thank Amy Swiffen, Marguerite Mendell, Chris Hurl, Ana Gomez, Guillaume Tremblay-Boily, Adam van Sertima, and Bernadette Johnson for their comments on earlier drafts of this article. 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