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Re: Question on capitalism and fascism

Stranger — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 18:41:39 GMT

I wonder, had the axis won the war, if we would today hear how capitalism leads to socialism?

Re: Question on capitalism and fascism

Eduard - Gabriel Munteanu — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 18:33:06 GMT

Those making up the mainstream political spectrum have a funny idea about doctrines. Or more like they have no clue. They actually believe there was such a thing as extreme/far right, and they do this mistake in two kinds of situations:

When referring to Hitler or Mussolini - A real blunder which could be attributed to the opposition between USSR and the Nazist Germany / Fascist Italy. It looks like they took the political orientation of USSR and just reversed it, regardless of the ideological similarity. Then they say extremes are similar, heh.
When referring to Pinochet or the likes - Still a mistake, it can be attributed to the fact that those regimes have some remote resemblance to liberalism, while being dictatorial.

Still, most ways of depicting a political spectrum convey some erroneous information, even when using multiple axes. For example, try fitting anarcho-capitalism and authoritarian statist liberalism on the same political compass (the axes are vertical libertarian-authoritarian and horizontal left-right). You'll think the former goes to bottom right corner, while the latter fits into the upper right corner. But it's easy to see the right-ist component, although identical, is not preserved in any real situation. The error stems from the fact that they're taking personal and economic freedom as orthogonal axes, when in fact they're not, and trying to make a square graph out of it.

Re: Question on capitalism and fascism

Marko — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 06:36:45 GMT

Schmitto2121:

I am a bit confused, all I have ever heard is how 'pure capitalism' leads to fascism, I am sure ive been tought this by a lot of socialists but please tell me how libertarians or anarchy-capitalists oppose this view and argue it.

It`s nonsense. Every movement seeks to stuff all of their opponents into the same bag and socialists are no different, so they make this sort of fairy tales and belive them.

In reality fascism is at least semi-totalitarian, while `pure capitalism` would have to mean the state is completely absent so actually fascism and capitalism are at the extreme ends of the spectrum.

Fascism has much more in common with socialism than capitalism. Economicaly fascism is guilded socialism. It is a specific hierarchical form of socialism where society is seen as divided into a number of classes such as peasants, workers, industrialists, latifundists and so on and the state then acts as an intermediary between these classes and manages the relations by which these classes will interact. Eg, it does not allow any class to "exploit" the other and makes sure they all work for `the greater glory of the nation` and so on. Fascist developed this on their own and called it corporatism, but actually fabian socialist in England had developed exactly the same theory decades before fascism even came into existance and called it guilded socialism.

All of this being said however, you must understand that what we have today is not at all pure capitalism, in fact it is becoming less and less like capitalism and more and more like corporatism/guilded socialism. But that is due to joint efforts of the socialists and of the fascists and their hold on the state, rather than some inherent mechanism of the market to self-destruct and go fascist/socialist.

laminustacitus:

Mussolini identified himself as a socialist,

Before he became a fascist Mussolini was a full-blown socialist and between the years 1943 and 1945 he was the head of German puppet state in Northern Italy which he named Italian Social Republic.

Re: Question on capitalism and fascism

laminustacitus — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 06:17:19 GMT

What is fascism but another form of socialism? Mussolini identified himself as a socialist, and NSDAP (the Nazi party) was an abbrieviation of Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei - the National German Socialist Worker's Party.

Question on capitalism and fascism

Schmitto2121 — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 06:09:29 GMT

I am a bit confused, all I have ever heard is how 'pure capitalism' leads to fascism, I am sure ive been tought this by a lot of socialists but please tell me how libertarians or anarchy-capitalists oppose this view and argue it.