- Capitalism and Alternatives -

Fascism is not the *only* system that allows government control over industry

Posted by: DonS ( USA ) on November 03, 1999 at 13:09:42:

In Reply to: Oh, I see posted by Kweassa on October 31, 1999 at 18:16:14:

:
: Ok, Don, remember this little line where you said:

: "Don: Fascism is the system where the government controls industry."

Don: Perhaps my choice of words were bad: "a system" should replace "the system" in the above statement.

: then you said:

: "Don: Communism is not fascism, for one thing."

Don: Yes.

: and

: "Don: Socialists are not fascists."

Don: Yes.

: Then that would be in simple deducive logic:

: "Socialism or Communism does not emphasize on government control over the industry, because they are not fascists"

Don: Fascism is not the *only* system that allows government control over industry, so the above does not follow.

: Doesn't it seem to everybody that those lines up there contradict themselves very very nastily?

Don: No, since I do not believe fascism is the only system that allows government control of industry.

: Now this is confusing. Meanings have become very warped and destroyed here. Now then, even though 'socialism' and communism is technically qualified under your definition of fascism, WHY is it then socialists/communists are NOT fascists?

Don: Under socialism, the state owns industry (or common ownership, I suppose, for stateless socialism). Under fascism, most industry is not state owned, but it is state controlled.


: And howcome that the Social Democracies of Europe with less emphasis on government control over industries than USSR(namely, maintaining the market as fixed reality) falls under the category of fascism, then?

Don: For the same reason that nazi Germany was fascist while having less state control of industry than the USSR. In the USSR, the state owned industry. That is maximum control.

Don: I realize that the fascism of the modern western democracies is quit different than that of nazi Germany. But they share very similar economic systems, so I consider them both fascist.

: The answer would be that when I asked for a clarification on 'fascism', you didn't give me the definition, but rather a feature.

: "Don: My usage is purely economic. You do not have to wear jack boots and brown shirts to be a fascist."

Don: Sorry about that. Fascism is state control of private industry.

: Ah. You are saying in purely economic terms that fascists also tried to control the industry. In economic aspect, Socialism and communism is the same as fascism, and you never denied that they controlled the industry. They are not the same since the economical definition of fascism is not "government control over industry". That's just a feature of fascism, not WHAT FASCISM IS <- this is what you are talking about, isn't it?

Don: Fascism is government control (but not total ownership) of industry, while socialism is government ownership of industry.

: Then this is the picture I'm getting. You put fascism in the middle, but generally, from left to right it would go: communism - socialism - social democracy - liberalism - conservatism - fascism. They got this definiton because people take pro-capitalists to the right and anti-capitalists to the left. The orders are determined by political tendencies on HOW to promote the economical system they support(ie. immediate revolution as a means of socialism=communism, violent dictatorships as promoting capitalist corporative state=fascism). People take fascism as a political term. The economical definition of fascism is still under the category of capitalism, and they have extreme policies for maintaining it. That's why they put in in the far-right.

Don: In my system, left to right it is: socialism-fascism-capitalism. Communism is one type of socialism, while the nazis were one form of fascism. The exterme right is true capitalism: the market forces, not the government, control the economy. The far left is total government control: the government *owns* industry. Fascism falls in the middle.

: Then the pieces fit together.




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