Let’s start from the premise that capitalist rule confronts an endemic problem of order. That problem of order is traceable ultimately to the primary social division that characterises capitalist society, the one separating capitalists (the owners of the means of production) from workers (those dispossessed of direct access to the means of life).
From this basic division there emerges at least three axes of tension and potential disorder across scales, from the firm, to the nation, to the region, all the way to the world system. The first axis is the horizontal conflict between capitalists – source of both dynamism and crisis. Horizontal conflict between capitals is a source of dynamism in periods of expansion because, among other things, the whip of competition compels individual capitals to discipline their labour forces and reinvest part of their surplus into new rounds of productivity-enhancing technological innovation. At the same time, it is a source of crisis because of the recurring problem of overaccumulation and the tendency of the rate of profit to fall. What is rational for individual capitals to pursue in these contexts is irrational at the system level, catalysing problems of crisis and disorder.
A second axis is vertical conflict between capitalists and workers, again from the scale of the firm all the way to the scale of the collective worker and the collective capitalist on the world stage. That their interests are fundamentally at odds is the most important source of an uneven but perennial problem of maintaining class order.
A third axis of tension has to do with the dominant territorially-bounded form of political rule in the nation-state and the fact that the logic of capital exceeds these boundaries, realising itself most fully at the level of the world market. Historically, this meant the creation of a hierarchical chain of stronger and weaker states with uneven concentrations of capital constituting the world system.
The problem of political order infuses all forms of capitalist rule, through all three of the axes, with an authoritarian disposition. Just as all forms of labour in the history of capitalism – from slavery, to debt peonage, to wage-labour – exist on a continuum of unfreedom and coercion, so too is the history of capitalism characterised by a continuum of alienated political forms of domination premised upon establishing and reproducing order appropriate to capitalist accumulation. One problem we are faced with is the different ways in which capitalist ruling classes have sought to impose order over the last several hundred years. We need to grasp both what is singular in each of the political forms and what is shared in terms of authoritarian disposition across all of them.
In today’s remarks, which draw on collaborative work with my friend Todd Gordon who can’t be here, I want to deal only with the question of specifically fascist resolutions to the problem of capitalist disorder, and to then think through the question of fascism vis-à-vis the debate concerning the second Trump government in the United States.
Fascism
Fascism should not be seen as a radical departure from some ostensibly “normal” capitalism, but, rather, as a distinctive, extreme expression of the same militant defence of property, privilege, and racial order that motivated much of liberal history. Pseudo-scientific racism, anti-Semitism, eugenics, colonial massacres, wars of conquest, campaigns of extermination, the impersonal, bureaucratic administration of legal-rational state violence, and the First World War, were common elements to every European colonial power of the late-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, elements defended systematically by liberal high theory of the day. In this sense, as Enzo Traverso reminds us, Nazism’s singularity did not lie “in its opposition to the West, but in its capacity to find a way to synthesize the West’s various forms of violence”.
In the first instance, what set fascism apart from its reactionary predecessors was the context from which it emerged – above all, two depressions, the fallout from World War I, the Russian Revolution and the possibility of revolutionary left emulation elsewhere in Europe. An explicit theory of fascism is necessary in order to distinguish the phenomenon from other reactionary movements and regimes with which it shares certain ideological and sociological attributes. An adequate theory needs to encompass fascism across its distinct temporal rhythms (embryonic emergence, growth to mass scale, and consolidation through state power) as well as its modal forms (as movement, as party, and as regime).
We can only hope to construct such a theory form the materials of history, using both contextualisation and decontextualisation. Following historian Geoff Eley, contextualisation means “to historicize fascism by being as specific as possible about its early twentieth century dynamics of emergence, by isolating its characteristics as a locatable, historically specific formation”. The second step, decontextualisation, is to be understood, according to Eley, “in the historian’s sense of freeing the term from those immediate markers of time and place. Only then can we get to the process of abstraction that delivers the really useful knowledge we need for today”. So, decontextualisation is a process of abstracting from history after close contextualisation.
In these remarks I will only have time to make explicit the second step, decontextualisation, or the abstraction from history. The aim is to arrive at a theory of fascism which is portable across different periods of capitalist modernity after its origin in Italy in the 1920s, but not more expansively transhistorical. We arrive at what we take to be the core constitutive elements of fascism that we would expect to encounter in some form in any new fascist iteration.
To anticipate an obvious objection, this is emphatically not an arbitrary, empiricist inventory of features to which other features might be arbitrarily added or exchanged. It is a conceptual framework premised upon there being a master logic that coheres the elements into a “totality organized around an axis or frame”.[1] The master logic in question is capitalist crisis on a civilisational scale.
The Elements
So, here are the eight constitutive elements of a theory of fascism, the constitutive elements we would expect to recur in different forms in any new iteration. Again, the elements are intended to relate to fascism as both process and result, across distinct temporalities of fascist development and across its modal forms.
- First, with regard to context, the rise of fascism requires a severe and sustained crisis of capitalism, beyond the merely immediate, conjunctural fluctuations, and which makes the normal process of capitalist accumulation difficult if not impossible.
- Second, it is necessary that there be a foreboding sense of civilisational degeneration on the scale – but not with the same content – that shaped the political Zeitgeist from which classical fascism emerged in interwar Europe.
- Third, the crisis of capitalist accumulation must develop into a thoroughgoing crisis of bourgeois democracy.
- The fourth element of fascism is that, in the face of the crisis of bourgeois democracy, forms of repression within the legal parameters of bourgeois liberal rule or outside of them through traditional, depoliticising military dictatorship prove inadequate – likely through trial and error – for crisis resolution on the terms of capital – i.e. the restoration of the conditions of capitalist accumulation and capitalist hegemony.
- The fifth component is the way in which fascism offers a solution to the inadequacy of bourgeois legal forms of repression or traditional forms of military dictatorship. As a reactionary and militarised mass movement, with a capacity to mobilise supporters electorally, but especially in the streets through direct violence, fascism offers a mass-movement based, street-violence solution, focused on the physical annihilation of enemies.
- The sixth component has to do with the petty-bourgeois composition of fascism’s mass base. While interwar European fascism drew cross-class support, at its core it was a petty-bourgeois movement of small business owners, rural landowners, managers, civil servants, professionals, and military and ex-military members.
- Seventh, for fascists to take state power, they require widespread support from the capitalist class, and, before fascists are able to take power, with support from the bourgeoisie, they must first alter the balance of forces by inflicting partial setbacks to the popular class threats from below (in interwar Europe, this was a revolutionary threat from below).
- Eighth, and finally, there is assimilation into the bourgeois state and restoration of capitalist stability. With its victory, fascism is, to a large extent, assimilated into the bourgeois state apparatus and thus the movement’s extreme, unassimilable elements are necessarily liquidated – in particular, the “fascist left”. Fascist rule is put to the task of restoring capitalist stability, the necessary conditions for accumulation and capitalist hegemony.
Trump 2.0 in Light of the Fascism Question
The identification of the Trump government as fascist stems from a common conflation of authoritarianism with fascism and the often-related tendency to ignore or underestimate the authoritarianism baked into the liberal project itself. I have highlighted eight elements that we would expect to characterise any new iteration of fascism.
It is clear that some of these elements exist today, in the world-system as a whole, where relevant, and in the United States specifically: there is, in fact, a severe and sustained crisis of capitalism beyond the mere immediate conjunctural instabilities, which can precipitate a radicalisation of both the petty bourgeoisie and the ruling class as they search for an exit; there is, in fact, an increasing sense of civilisational degeneration and potential societal breakdown (expressed in, among other things, an increased resonance of irrationalism, conspiracy, and perceived threats to “traditional” notions of family and gender), adding another layer to the instability caused by capitalist crisis; and there is, in fact, the growth of a militant, nationalistic, and revanchist petty bourgeoisie, which, as a class, has the capacity to form a mass movement, and which historically constituted the compositional core of classical interwar fascism.
But other key features clearly do not yet exist. The depth of the crisis of bourgeois democracy is not comparable to interwar Europe and, notably, the challenge to ruling elites from below has not required more extreme forms of authoritarian intervention. Traditional forms of repression and dictatorial rule have not been shown to be inadequate in the face of working-class resistance and there has, therefore, been no need for recourse to fascist paramilitaries. In any case, at this point, fascist paramilitaries in the United States are nowhere near the strength, coordination, and discipline to play that role if called upon. And fascists have not been integrated into the American state in an organised and systematic fashion.
What probably lies ahead in terms of Trump’s successive inroads on the norms of liberal democracy is not fascist or single-party dictatorship but what the liberal scholars Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way call, “competitive authoritarianism”. Of the many potential international comparators, one could do worse in this respect than to point to Orbán’s Hungary or Erdoğan’s Turkey. Under such competitive authoritarianism in the United States, “the formal architecture of democracy, including multiparty elections, would remain intact”, political opposition would be legal and could challenge the established power (albeit on increasingly unequal terrain), and there would be no fundamental rupture with American constitutionalism. But competitive authoritarianism, as a regime type, does violate even the minimalistic norms and institutional commitments of liberal democracy insofar as “incumbents rig the game by deploying the machinery of government to attack opponents and co-opt critics”. This, obviously, poses a real danger in and of itself, but the nature of the threat is distinct from fascist dictatorship and begs an appropriately tailored riposte from the left.
Fascist Movements and Militias
That fascist movements are growing in the United States is a reality. We can trace their resurgence to the middle-run incubator of a growing militia movement in the 1990s, and the facilitating factor of state officialdom’s rising racism – especially Islamophobia – during the protracted War on Terror. The 2008 financial crisis and subsequent long economic downturn provided a conducive set of stimulants, with the COVID-19 pandemic and accelerating ecological breakdown providing yet more fuel to the fire. The Black Lives Matter mobilisations, the struggle for trans rights, and progressive movements against economic inequality were additional catalytic factors. Geopolitically, the rise of China and relative decline of the United States, in a scenario of global stagnation since 2008, are important parts of the world context for the rise of the far-right in the US.
However, fascist movements in the US are neither the most immediate authoritarian threat, nor do they define the Trump government. Trump’s defeat in the 2020 election was an important setback for the MAGA movement, as was the fiasco of the 6 January Capitol Hill riot, in which paramilitary and street-fighting organisations played a leading role. However, that regression was short-lived. The movement regrouped and radicalised.
With vocal support from Trump himself, Three Percenters, Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, and other extremist MAGA activists strategised to takeover local Republican organisations—Steven Bannon’s “precinct strategy”—where they would be able to set the party agenda and install their members and allies in key positions. These far-right activists have taken thousands of local Republican positions in the last several years, giving them significant influence in the party throughout the country. Many Republican politicians have close ties to paramilitary groups and have participated in protofascist political actions with them, including intimidation at voting centres, threatening violence against the courts and political opponents, and aestheticising violence in their political propaganda.
Still, the militia phenomenon in the United States can easily be exaggerated. Take Germany’s Sturmabteilung (Stormtroopers, SA) as a comparator. The SA was formed in 1921 as the reorganised paramilitary wing of the Nazi Party (NSDAP). It grew rapidly from a paramilitary force of roughly thirty thousand men in mid-1929 to four hundred and fifty thousand members in January 1932, on the eve of the Nazi seizure of power. The population of Germany in 1932 was roughly 66 million. Today, the population of the United States is roughly 347 million. For a paramilitary force in the contemporary United States to be proportionally comparable to the SA in 1932 would require about 2.3 million members. And this is to say nothing of the relatively scattered and uncoordinated nature of contemporary US militia groupings compared to the disciplinary unity of the SA.
Reliable figures on the size and composition of far-right militias in the United States are difficult to acquire, but suffice it to say, the comparison with Nazi militias is extremely weak. According to a mid-2020 report in the New York Times surveying expert findings on the subject, there were “some 15,000 to 20,000 active militia members in around 300 groups”. What is more, the article notes that membership of most of the 15,000-20,000 figure is reducible entirely to online participation. In any case, even if these dated estimates are conservative relative to today’s numbers (and it is not at all obvious that membership either is bigger today than it was in mid-2020 or more concentrated in fewer or more highly coordinated groups), it is clear that American militias at this stage pale in comparison to militia strength during the high rise of fascism in Germany. Nor is ICE, as some commentators have suggested in the context of the widespread raids in Chicago, the imminent presidential fascist militia that Trump has so far been lacking.
Trump’s recent use of the National Guard and deployment of Marines to Los Angeles and Washington, DC in the context of protests against widescale immigration raids suggests that, thus far, he has not found it necessary to use whatever influence he does enjoy over the actually existing disparate US militias.
Unitary Executive Theory
Finally, I want to add a little more to my comments on competitive authoritarianism by way of the legal ideology animating the Trump administration. Rather than inter-war fascism, the most notable reference point for the ideas animating Trump’s executive decrees is the quintessentially American “unitary executive theory”. It aligns closely with Trump’s dismissal of recalcitrant bureaucrats, usurpation of control over federal agencies, and insertion of unqualified allies into the civil service.
Unitary executive theory dates back to Ronald Reagan’s presidency and attempts to centralise presidential control and weaken checks to executive authority within the US political system. The theory was extended by George W. Bush during the War on Terror. After the recent death of Dick Cheney, vice president under George W. Bush from 2001-2009, one of the obituaries in the Financial Times reminded us that he had a “long-held belief in the ‘unitary executive,’ which holds that the law is what the president says it is”. Unitary executive theory was consolidated further by the presidency of Barack Obama (witness the invasion of Libya without congressional approval, drone strikes, targeted killings of alleged terrorists, the administration’s reliance on the state’s secret privileges against forms of oversight). It is instructive to note that the Trump administration’s legal argument that they don’t need congressional approval to bomb Venezuelan boats is built on a precedent established by Obama during the 2011 NATO air war over Libya.
Trump’s second term represents the radicalisation of this legal tradition. The intellectual proponents of unitary executive theory defend it through explicit reference to the American constitution. Likewise, Trump officials insist that their orders are legal and his legal team is doggedly contesting opposing judicial rulings. In other words, Trumpian state managers have not yet launched a revolutionary attack on the constitutional order. They have neither sought to overturn constitutionalism like interwar fascism, nor mounted a violent defence of their particular reading of that notoriously white supremacist document against the extant juridical order.
Instead, the Trump administration has relied on the existing legal apparatus to further its authoritarian ends, even while testing the limits of judicial oversight and due process. Such strategic machinations are less evidence of fascism immanent within the Trumpian regime than evidence of the immanence of authoritarianism within liberalism itself.
This is a transcript of Webber’s plenary talk, based directly on collaborative work with Todd Gordon, on 8 November 2025, at the annual Historical Materialism Conference in London. Todd Gordon teaches in the Department of Law and Society at Wilfrid Laurier University, Brantford. Most recently, he is co-author of Blood of Extraction: Canadian Imperialism in Latin America. Gordon is an editor of Midnight Sun magazine. Jeffery R. Webber teaches in the Department of Politics at York University, Toronto. Most recently, he is co-author of The Impasse of the Latin American Left. Webber sits on the editorial board of Historical Materialism. Gordon and Webber are working on a book together about the authoritarian disposition of capitalist rule.
[1] We are drawing here on the method developed by Michael Löwy and Robert Sayre’s to deal with the concept of romanticism. See Löwy and Sayre, Romanticism Against the Tide of Modernity, Durham: Duke University Press, 2002.
