Comment by zigzigzag | Hacker News Reader

Comment by zigzigzag | Hacker News Reader

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I think things make a lot more sense if fascism is recognised as a far-left ideology: the notion that it's "far right" doesn't really make any sense when examined and so we should really just question if it's been misclassified - possibly deliberately.

Mussolini himself said that fascism was basically a form of socialism, and his beef with socialism was more that - at one time - it had an internationalist and interventionist outlook. That didn't last long before "Socialism in one country" came along though and at that point the distinction between fascism and socialism largely disappears.

After all, what are the characteristics of the right? I'd say a preference for free markets over state intervention, a reverence for tradition, desire for a strong military, a leaning towards democracy and localism, and a general sense that government should do less. Would a far-right society then not be something like anarcho-capitalism? Whereas under Mussolini about 75% of Italian industry was state controlled and arguably fascism is about the fusion of the state and industry into a single whole (hardly distinct from bulk nationalisation).

I'm not sure there are any examples of far right societies in the 20th century, although perhaps Victorian England and the early years of the independent USA could be described that way.

Attempts to affiliate fascism with the far-left and the far-right are among the oldest tricks in the rhetorical book. Better to see fascism as what it is, sui generis: militant, centralized, starkly authoritarian governments animated by populist nationalism.

Since most of what defines fascism are points along a different axis than the distributive effects of an economy, I think it's a good idea to be suspicious of people who attempt to use fascism as an argument about economic systems.

Communist societies had less redistribution than many modern social democratic countries and even less than the US. They distributed to the party elite, sure, and kept everybody else poor.

Forget about ideological differences. Talk is cheap. Instead look at how the societies actually played out: almost the same way.

Your list of what defines fascism describes communism as well, except maybe for nationalism. And I am not even sure about that.

Authoritarian nationalist governments are a feature of every culture and every economic system. "Fascism" isn't ever going to be a kill-shot in an argument about "communism" versus "capitalism".

>Communist societies had less redistribution than many modern social democratic countries and even less than the US.

These were not Communist societies. Arguably the existing Communist societies were those in the form of primitive Communism, existing very long ago. You seem to be taking issue with certain ideas of implementation rather than the ideal itself - that is, a stateless and moneyless society without classes.

What similarities do you think exist between the ideals of fascism and Communism?

>militant, centralized, starkly authoritarian governments animated by populist nationalism.

Communism may be militant or pacifistic, i.e via reformism, gradualism or via violent revolution.

Communism is stateless, all powers of the government being transferred to the people.

Nationalism is impossible with Communism, as Communism is the recognition of a global market of the bourgeoisie, which requires workers of the world to unite against it.

Communism is not centralised, at least not necessarily. Distributed economic planning and indeed no economic planning at all are possible varieties.

"Mussolini himself said that fascism was basically a form of socialism"

Here's something else Mussolini said:

"Fascism, which was not afraid to call itself reactionary... does not hesitate to call itself illiberal and anti-liberal."

As Mussolini's professions of socialism, David Neiwert of Orcinus[1] said:

"Both Hitler and Mussolini pretended to have socialist aspirations as part of their propaganda efforts during their rise to power, largely as a way of encouraging working-class support. But they were unquestionably right wing politically by the time they obtained power, and in fact were viciously anti-left-wing as well."

"Those who repeat the "Nazis were socialists" claim are, in fact, falling for (and repeating) Nazi propaganda from the 1920s."

[1] - http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/2005/10/fascism-two-hoary-myths...

Socialism is a little vague and people disagree on what it means- but in broad strokes terms, it means redistributing power from the center towards the edges of society. Democracy does that: every person gets one vote, no matter how wealthy they are. Public education does that: knowledge is no longer concentrated on the hands of people who can afford to pay to send their kids to school. Voting rights for women, labor laws, public health care- all these things redistribute power from the center to the edges. The problem with power is that the more you have, the more you can get- so in the absence of corrective forces, which conservatives of course want to remove, any society will follow the path through oligarchy to de facto monarchy. We are possibly on that path now.

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