this post was submitted on 18 Jul 2024
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[–] [email protected] 67 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Fascism is simply Capitalism when the Capitalists succeed enough

[–] [email protected] 52 points 5 months ago (3 children)

Not entirely.

Germany wasn't having a very successful economy when Nazism started.

Nor did Italy or Spain.

[–] [email protected] 48 points 5 months ago (1 children)

That relies on the assumption that what's good for the economy is good for the capitalists, they always make sure that capitalism occasionally goes up in flames to take advantage of social unrest.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Considering the capitalists have forced the world to arbitrarily measure the "economy" by measuring how willing rich people are to play in the rich man casino...

[–] [email protected] 25 points 5 months ago

That's the point.

In Germany there was a battle between left and right back then. The economy boomed in the 20s and faltered in the 30s. Capitalists saw the threat of socialism looming just behind Poland and so they supported fascism.

The Nazis funneled billions into large businesses. It was unsustainable and morally multi-level wrong, but they skimmed a lot of profits from these agreements. They got rich, while the economy started to collapse - even before the war.

Even after the war, most of them got away. They kept much of their wealth.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago

In fact, fascism often gains support from middle class desperation, with the blessing of the booj who prefer it over communism (which tends to rise from the lower classes during similar times of desperation)

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (4 children)

One is a form of economy, the other is an ideology of societal oppression. Fascist governments have run capitalist, communist, and socialist economies. Historically, more fascist governments have developed from socialist nations than capitalist. That doesn’t make fascism inherently socialist either.

The meme would be more accurate in stating that fascism is a failure of democracy than capitalism.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 5 months ago (1 children)

That's not really accurate, fascism is specifically a reactionary attempt to "turn the clock back" to "the good old days," it's focused on class colaborationism and nationalism.

Fascism is wholly anticommunist.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (3 children)

There’s nothing specific about fascism. The term was coined during Mussolini’s reign, and has taken many forms since. Kershaw famously wrote that "trying to define 'fascism' is like trying to nail jelly to the wall."

The only consistent components of fascism are an autocratic government and a dictatorial ruler, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible nationalism through suppression of opposition.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 months ago (1 children)

You're leaving out the inherent focus on Corporatism and Class Colaborationism, which are key components of historically fascist countries like Italy under Mussolini or Nazi Germany. You're also leaving out nationalism and xenophobia, the necessity of an "enemy," and more. Fascism rarely shows all symptoms of fascism, but by your definition is just becomes "bad government."

Fascism is a specific and flexible form of a bad government/economic structure with its own set of rising factors and characteristics, not every cruel act by a state is fascist.

Eco's 14 points on fascism are not entirely complete, but do paint a far better picture than what you're working with here.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

The only consistent components of fascism are an autocratic government and a dictatorial ruler, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible nationalism through suppression of opposition.

This is authoritarian nationalism, not fascism. All fascism is nationalist and authoritarian, not all nationalism or authoritarianism is fascist. Bismarck, Churchill and Erdogan are/were authoritarian nationalists, but I wouldn't call any of them fascist.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

This is authoritarian nationalism, not fascism.

They're not defining fascism, they're listing the consistent components. Their post is completely agreeing with your statement: "All fascism is nationalist and authoritarian, not all nationalism or authoritarianism is fascist."

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Fascism in the most vague sense that you can get while still being accurate is enforcement of a hierarchy, practically no social mobility, based on traits like ethnicity, sex, wealth, etc. supposed to be the "natural order" of society; often involving some sort of mythological/religious/idealized "past" or predecessor society/civilization which was then upended by some sort of evil group(s) (the targetted groups/scapegoats), which stole from us and which are an evil that need to be stopped. This, of course, is slightly different from how Mussolini's fascism was originally visualized – which was a corporatist nationalist dictatorship about "might"/the strong coming out on top (translated into militarism) justified by religion/mythology (in fascist Italy's case about being the successor to the great ancient Rome and seeing through to a greater Roman Empire) – but it's how the world has become to understand the concept of fascism as time went on.

This is the reason many see capitalism as sort of "diet fascism" – it's entirely about a hierarchy based around socioeconomic class/groups, with highly restricted social mobility (although not completely closed off as fascism's is), and it's seen that your place in the hierarchy in a hypothetically purely capitalistic system is the natural order of things – your place in the hierarchy is supposedly based on how hard you work, rich people are rich because they've simply worked smarter and harder than the people under them, and anyone can go up the hierarchy if they simply just are a better person. Of course, in reality we know this doesn't work and among other things generational wealth & systematic roadblocks created by the wealthy play a major factor in this hierarchy, but I digress. The reason classical liberalism / free market capitalism hates class equality, hates a system like socialism which calls for abolishing unjust hierarchies, is because it sees the abolition of the socioeconomic/class-based hierarchy as going against the natural order and forcibly placing people in the "wrong" places in the hierarchy (all on the same level) when some people deserve to be below others because they're lazy, illegal immigrants, "criminals", etc. In essence, they see equality not as equality, but as an "upside-down" hierarchy where the former upper class is forced below the formerly marginalized groups; to a more privileged person, equality feels like oppression. Capitalism needs an underclass to function, in a capitalistic system people with certain traits always have an unequal distribution throughout the hierarchy (scapegoated/marginalized groups significantly tending to pool at the bottom with only a few "token" examples truly traversing upwards, and people closer to the top of the pyramid being less and less prone to falling down the hierarchy). It sounds a lot like fascism, because fascism and capitalism are ideologies/systems with loosely equivalent structures but capitalism being far less pronounced.

Additionaly, classical liberalism & moreso conservative capitalism are centered around reggressing to a supposed "golden age" of the past where things were better before "they" ruined it (whoever "they" is and what specifically "they" did is vague and changes from belief to belief but usually includes taxation/redistribution of wealth/power away from the people at the top of the hierarchy, or some shift in the hierarchy). It's like a much less pronounced form of the mythologized predecessor civilization/society of fascism, instead of hundreds or thousands of years ago it's more like 30-40 years ago.

Fascism in the way we currently understand it doesn't even strictly require dictatorial/autocratic rule, it can be enforced in a technically "democratic" system as long as certain groups are excluded from the democratic process. Of course, the line between democracy, broader oligarchy, narrower oligarchy, and autocracy becomes blurrier the more of the population you exclude, since democracy is more of a spectrum than anything, but generally there's a lot of possible fascist systems where people would still consider it democratic enough. Your perspective is pretty deeply tied to which group you belong to as well – the average German thought Nazi Germany was a democracy even when Poland was invaded and throughout much of the war, but obviously the Roma and Jewish populace being genocided would definitely not agree. Capitalism does this exclusion to a large extent too – just usually not in the form of outright completely banning a group from participating – and the upper classes have signficantly more say in the democratic process, to the point where the upper classes can choose to completely eliminate options they collectively dislike enough from the equation regardless of the consent of the lower classes.

Overall while fascism and capitalism aren't a complete overlap, fascism is for the most part a progression of capitalism (or, as more and more people see it, capitalism is a derivation of fascism and/or feudalism where we keep trying to patch up the flaws using a few socialist/progressive/democratic qualities) and pretty much requires a capitalist (or capitalist-adjacent) system to exist. Fascism can't use, say, a socialist system because socialism inherently requires working towards the abolition of the power structures/hierarchies which fascism is based around. Of course, in fascist systems the supposed "superior" class often has power redistributed to them in the form of e.g. social welfare benefits and infrastructure investments, which isn't straight up classical liberalism obviously, but that doesn't necessarily violate capitalism/the capitalist power structures as a whole, it's just using a different form of capitalism in order to keep the currently-not-scapegoated but also-not-highest castes content and thinking that things aren't so bad.

If you have any questions about this or can't see the reasoning of certain parts, I'm sure I (or someone else) will be happy to answer it for you.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

This is just false. There's no interpretation of 'communist economies' that applies to any fascist state ever. Two of the core characteristics of fascism are anti-liberalism and anti-Marxism, which covers basically all socialism. Fascist leaders (even the national-syndicalism types like Mussolini) have an odd relationship with capitalism, but ultimately I don't believe they moved towards socialism either.

Historically, more fascist governments have developed from socialist nations than capitalist.

Apart from Francoist Spain, I can't think of a single example of a fascist government which succeeded a socialist government.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fascist_movements_by_country

[–] [email protected] -1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Fascism is inherently capitalist, the communist "version" is called national communism or national bolshevism

[–] [email protected] 12 points 5 months ago

National bolshevism is not communist version of fascism, it's neonazi ideology and it's anticommunist too just trying to coopt the aesthetics.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Interesting. I think you have a point.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago

The post you replied to has serious issues, please see the other replies for more info.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Their point is literally fascist propaganda

[–] [email protected] -2 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

How so? I understand the relationship of fascism and capitalism. But it stands to reason a similar social framework could arise from socialism, especially during the transition from capitalism to socialism. Think Khmer Rouge

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Okay so everything after "I understand the thing" proves you don't understand anything. You literally don't have any functioning definition of fascism at all. Socialism is the transition state. And the Khmer Rouge weren't socialist (you can tell because they were US funded during the cold war).

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

Maybe not, but patronization won’t help. Maybe explaining how this definition doesn’t apply to the Khmer Rouge. Fascism is a vague term. Was it authoritarianism? What separates it from fascism? Can socialist countries be authoritarian? Does that make them fascist if they’re not capitalist?