That’s a good question! Although the Fascists criticized both socialism and (liberal) capitalism, they did not spend their spare time waylaying capitalists, let alone as often as they harassed and massacred us. In fact, the Fascists received significant funding from various businessmen, who used the Fascists to exterminate around three thousand of us from 1920 to 1922.
Fascist ‘anticapitalism’ might not have been quite as shallow as it first appeared, but in any event it had little in common with our anticapitalism. Quoting Robert Paxton:
While they denounced speculative international finance (along with all other forms of internationalism, cosmopolitanism, or globalization—capitalist as well as socialist), they respected the property of national producers, who were to form the social base of the reinvigorated nation. When they denounced the bourgeoisie, it was for being too flabby and individualistic to make a nation strong, not for robbing workers of the value [that] they added. What they criticized in capitalism was not its exploitation but its materialism, its indifference to the nation, its inability to stir souls. More deeply, fascists rejected the notion that economic forces are the prime movers of history. For fascists, the dysfunctional capitalism of the interwar period did not need fundamental reordering; its ills could be cured simply by applying sufficient political will to the creation of full employment and productivity.
(Source.)
The petty bourgeoisie was the basis of Fascism, and the petty bourgeoisie was in a struggle against both the haute bourgeoisie and us (often the latter more than the former), hence Fascism’s philosophic incoherency. Since most or all of the petty bourgeoisie dreams of becoming ‘successful’, though, they cannot abolish the haute bourgeoisie, only criticize or possibly moderate it. This is why many ‘anticonsumerists’ recommend buying from small businesses as a supposed alternative to buying from big businesses.
Many Fascists also had a military background, and it was common for Fascists to have both military and petty bourgeois backgrounds together. Take Adolf Schicklgruber, for example. Of course there are also some antifascists who have military backgrounds, but they tend to be very antiwar and unhappy about their military history. Lower‐class socialists are overwhelmingly antiwar. Petty bourgeois ‘anticapitalists’, not so much.
If you find any self‐identified socialist promoting the retention of private property, capital, the law of value, generalized commodity production, wage labour, or businesses as long‐term strategies, you’ll have found a pseudosocialist. We can argue that these phenomena might have to be tolerated in the short‐term, but trying to preserve them for centuries is neither possible nor desirable.
I hope that this helps! Feel free to ask me more.
