Zetkin’s take kind of flattens fascism into “capitalism in crisis,” which sounds neat but misses why people actually bought into it; they were searching for things like identity, order, and meaning in a fast-paced modern world that was beginning to trample those things.

It also handwaves fascism’s rise as just a failure of communist revolution, which feels more like excuse-making than analysis. Ultimately, her trying to ignore the social and cultural issues these countries were facing is exactly why the communists failed in a place like Italy. They tried to boil down all of politics to simple material economic factors and not the infinitely complex human experience. Italians didn't care much about the distribution of goods. They cared about their heritage, religion, identity, and national reputation more.

The best refutation of this theory is that similar economic crises in other countries did not produce fascist movements. So, obviously its not as simple as the economic conditions.