this post was submitted on 19 Aug 2025
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America was all those things, though.
It was already an established bourgeois society with a liberal democratic model of governance. The growth of this society, however, was being constrained by the British Parliament - who had established the Thirteen Colonies for the purposes of extraction to the benefit of Britain. This put the British aristocracy at odds with the American settlers and created a class conflict of interests; with Americans settlers wanting to expand their profits by pushing deeper into the territory of indigenous peoples' and rival empires while the British aristocracy wanted to safeguard their resource farms in America to fuel what was really important to them: their estates in the British Isles.
While the labor movement may have been nonexistent at this point in this time there was still a growing abolitionist movement to consider. Chattel slavery was used throughout the colonies and played an integral role in the colonial modes of production. This was a direct threat to bourgeois interests and it's why despite having many champions slavery wasn't abolished when the USA was established. The Founding Fathers even admitted that they couldn't oppose slavery, despite disagreeing with it on moral grounds, because it benefited them directly.
As for imperialism, what did America do right after gaining independence? What was doing while fighting for independence? What was it doing even while it was part of the British Empire as a colony? Expanding violently & rapidly to take as much land and resources as possible, projecting power wherever it could, pushing rival empires out of its sphere of influence, enslaving those countries it either couldn't conquer or didn't want to conquer.
The American project of empire-building was 100% the original incarnation of fascism and it's why Herzl, Mussolini, and Hitler copied our homework.
Hitler and other fascists definitely took inspiration from the colonial apparatus of America, but that's not all fascism is and was. That's not to say its not an important part, but it's not the only part.
Before we go further I want to reiterate that this is not a defense of American colonialism. It's just that it's undialectical to describe it as fascist.
It did do all of those things. Slavery, genocide, etc. But I think there are a few key distinctions
1.Existentialism
The United States engaged in its conquests "peacemeal" per se. Of course there were issues with the technology at the time, but Hitler attempted to conquer the whole of Europe in about half a decade, Japan attempted to conquer China in 8 years. Why did these fascist nations do this? Because there was an existential crisis of capitalism. If they did not engage in rapid Conquest then their economies would've collapsed. It is also why we see the reemergence of fascism today, because of the decline in the rate of profit and that, finally after 400 years, the west has ran out of places to plunder. However, America again existed in early stage capitalism. It's expansion was not predicated on an existential crisis to preserve the system, but simply to out compete other empires and colonies. It took another 70 years from independence for the US to reach it's mainland extent.
It's similar to why I wouldn't call Napoleonic France fascist. I certainly don't like it, and he engaged in colonialism, slavery, and conquests, but he represented a different historical phenomenon that shared his name.
You might argue the abolition movement could constitute as this, but even without the US being a constituent nation of the empire, Britain still took until 1833 to abolish it. It certainly was one of the fears of the colonists, but it was, again, a driving force of inter-imperial competition rather than an existential threat (although of course the slave owners probably saw it as such).
2.Reorganization of society
This is, in my opinion, the biggest indication of fascism. Looking at all the fascist coups and "counter revolutions"* of the 20th and 21st century, fascism necessitates a mass reorganization of society in some form or another. Most notably the mass removal of social democratic labor laws and restrictions of Bourgeois political freedoms. This is a key part of fascism entirely because of the existentialism mentioned in the last part.
However, as noted previously, the USA did not engage in a mass societal change. There were certainly political changes and societal upheaval, sure, but for the most part the point of the war for independence was
The laboring class's wish for more political freedoms away from the British crown, and a cessation of exploitative tarrifs and taxation
The ruling class's wish and will for independence from the British crown and parliament in order to further expand their own imperial possessions and engage in further accumulation outside of the trade restrictions of the Empire.
The key thing is that this is a continuation of the status quo, and not a reactionary revolt to a new state of society. Perhaps you could consider it reactionary, but really the independence war has much more in common with bonapartism (the seizing of power by a ruling class with some reforms in order to stave off revolutionary reorganization) than fascism.
*Counter revolution is the wrong word here, but I really don't have a good term to describe it. I am taking from one of Hitler's speeches at his putsh trial as he says "I am a revolutionary against the revolution." And I feel that encapsulates fascism to a tee, but "counter revolution" is already a term, and even describing fascist takeovers as revolutions doesn't feel accurate either