Road to Serfdom
F.A. Hayek pointed out in Road to Serfdom that Marxist socialism and fascism had similar roots. He wrote: "There is a great deal of truth in the often heard statement that Fascism and Nazism are a sort of middle-class socialism-only that in Italy and Germany the supporters of these new movements were economically hardly a middle class any longer. It was to a large extent a revolt of a new under-privileged class against the labor aristocracy which the industrial labor movement had created. There can be little doubt that no single economic factor has contributed more to help these movements than the envy of the unsuccessful professional man, the university trained engineer or lawyer, and of the "white collared proletariat" in general, of the engine driver or compositor and other members of the strongest trade unions whose income was many times theirs. Nor can there be much doubt that in terms of money income the average member of the rank and file of the Nazi movement in its early years was poorer than the average trade unionist or member of the older socialist party-a circumstance which only gained poignancy from the fact that the former had often seen better days and were frequently still living in surroundings which were the result of this past."
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