the issue of the origins of fascism comes up so often. there's ad hoc and clinical answers. it generally goes through mussolini to some kind of guild organization. a lot of demagogues will try and twist hitler around as some kind of union representative, but people that know what they're talking about understand that he was a tool of industry and the system was designed to co-opt the unions away from socialism and towards nationalism rather than actually represent them (that is, "national socialist" is a sort of orwellian oxymoron, that tried to redefine socialism as everything it wasn't). somebody might say something about hobbes in passing....

in fact, hobbes is describing it just about perfectly in chapter 22 of leviathan, which was 1652, in precisely the terms mussolini would use - it's about society being organized into "corps", this whole materialist conception of a mechanical, working whole.

and yet hobbes is usually thought of as the first liberal. what nonsense. he's explicitly rejecting all individual rights (except the right to self-defense) and going out of his way to invest all property in the hands of the sovereign, thereby negating anything resembling property rights (although he seems to expect that use rights should be made clear to prevent squabbling). he strikes me as a massive influence on marx.

but his system is really, truly straight-up fascism. word for word.