If I were a Marxist...

If I were a Marxist, I would be tempted to interpret liberal-democracy as the superstructure that corresponded to the stage of consumer capitalism, and "pop Fascism" (autocratically led plutocracy with populist constructions of reality) as corresponding to the newest stage of capitalism, which is becoming more like neo-feudalism with key corporations and billionaires defining what used to be the market. This stage of capitalism squeezes out the middle class and concentrates wealth ever more firmly in the hands of a small financial elite, whereas liberal representative democracy - which capital could largely control through influence over government (except in crisis, like the Great Depression) - lived from a fairly broad middle class that was contented by relative prosperity and consumption. But the current concentration of capital and its technological changes shrink that class dramatically, making it necessary to have firmer control and an ideology (a distorted picture of reality) to keep the masses at bay. Primitive nationalism seems to work best for this purpose.