The Intersection of Corporate and State Power- Is Not Fascism, But A Cry for Help.

You’ve probably read the trite quote, attributed to Mussolini, that the “intersection of state and corporate power is the definition of fascism”, or “Fascism might be more properly called corporatism”. Not only did Mussolini not say either quote, we have ample evidence before us today that what such a merger produces is not in fact fascism, but something much different.

            Definitions of fascism are notoriously difficult. However, if we take the colloquial definition, of what the common man would define fascism as- militarism, authoritarianism, nationalism, racial or religious chauvinism- what such a merger has produced is not that.

            A few salient incidents in the recent news have driven home this reality. The American light beer company Budweiser, a subsidiary of the international beverage brand AB InBev, produced a limited run beer can celebrating a social media influencer Dylan Mulvaney, who identifies as a transsexual. The big box retail outlet Target recently prominently stocked items which “celebrated” various made up gender categories in its stores, and even offered items for sale that seemed to support transsexualism in children.

            The public- or at least those that bother to care about such things- reacted negatively, and Bud Light’s sales dropped precipitously after the endorsement came to light. The marketing consultant hired by Bud Light was unceremoniously dropped. Target lost significant sales (as it did years ago with its trans activism as well), and removed its displays at many stores. It is clear that the majority of Americans do not support the sort of esoteric gender ideology that these companies find so endlessly fascinating. So why do they push it?

            The answer is, ultimately, that in the United States, large companies exist in a sort of symbiotic relationship with state regulation. They are regulated by the state and federal governments; yet, at the same time, they exercise outsized power over these governments through lobbying, campaign donations, and a revolving door of regulators who leave government service to work in the private sector. Private sector executives often also (temporarily) leave the private sector to work for regulatory agencies. Regulatory capture happens very quickly in this environment. Administrative rulemaking comment periods are inevitably filled with the back and forth of the two poles of power in American life, synthesizing a position in real time. They are in dialectic with one another; their synthesis is the philosophy you now see in every department store, corporate training, advertisement, and political press release. The message is one of basic human fungibility, with the only distinctions being consumer choices- consumer choice extending though, now, to almost every area of human life.

            So why do these private companies continue to come back to the well of abnormal sexuality over and over again, even though they seem to lose money every time? The answer to this is that both are educated in the same places; the education provided to both government bureaucrats and private sector managers emphasizes, from an early age “making a difference”. Both were inculcated with hagiographies of historical figures who “made a difference” by “breaking down barriers”. They all write college admission essays about “making a difference”. They graduate, become HR managers, and write press releases about how their companies want to “make a difference” and “break down barriers”. This is, in fact, an important psychological need for them.

            But the most significant barriers have already been broken down. Women achieved legal equality long ago. Slavery ended 160 years ago. The Civil Rights era is barely in living memory. But these people need to “make a difference”.  If they aren’t “making a difference” they would have to confront a reality that they really, really don’t like: that they aren’t important, that their job isn’t that meaningful, that the idealism that was beaten into them as children was just regime propaganda. The idea of not mattering is too painful to confront.

            So, new eras of struggle must be created. New categories of oppressed people will be conjured into being through academic discourse; these ideas will be transmitted to the future bureaucrats and managers in school; they will then, in their new positions, try to “make a difference”. Any push back on this will only prove to them that their cause is just and they are fighting against the forces of darkness and bigotry. This is permanent revolution- but unlike Trotsky’s formulation, this revolution comes from the top, not the bottom.

            And this is ultimately why the entire infrastructure of social crusades must be dismantled; because it will, quite literally, dissolve society. There is no point at which they will stop and say “That’s it, we’ve achieved equality, we’re done.” A new group will be created; the cycle will begin again and again until nothing remains but atomized labor units, floating in a sea of consumer choices, everything a market.  

            So, each new generation of corporate managers, through no conspiracy at all, but rather through a distributed dialectic with their own regulators, converge on new vistas of struggle against life. Their interests intersect, and support one another- but no one could argue that this produces classical fascism. I would argue instead, is that the intersection of state and corporate power in America is really a sign of individual powerlessness and despair. These people have no real purpose in life, and are crying out for a great cause. Instead of gender ideology, we need to give them real purpose, and a real struggle: building the State.