Is there a difference between Socialism, Marxism and Fascism?

[off2bed]

First, he escaped to Costa Rica, then Venezuela sent a plane to take him to Nicaragua to be with his Marxist brother Danny.

 

[Sean]

I'm too busy today following the coup d'etat in Honduras today, where they kicked out a Communist president.

You mean where the military kicked out the democratically elected president because he was holding a referendum?

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

You mean where the military kicked out the democratically elected president because he was holding a referendum?

An illegal referendum according to the other branches of the government.

 

[Sean]

An illegal referendum according to the other branches of the government.

Asking the people to vote on something is cause for a military coup?

 

[off2bed]

Asking the people to vote on something is cause for a military coup?

Simpleton useful idiot.

 

[Sean]

Simpleton useful idiot.

Why do you hate democracy?

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

Asking the people to vote on something is cause for a military coup?

In South America almost ANYTHING is cause for a military coup...

Where have you been for the last 50 years?

 

[Frisco_Slug_Esq]

Why do you hate democracy?

It leads to looting.

 

[off2bed]

Why do you hate democracy?

Because democracy is suicide. I love Constitutional representative republics, liberty, an informed and well armed populace, fuzzy puppies, and pretty flowers.

 

[underguy1]

Fascism is corporativism. i.e. a condition of capitalism where the state functions for the benefit of corporations. Like today's USA.

The nazis were fascists (whether or not Hitler spoke as one). The corporations were extremely powerful but that aspect has been downplayed in "history".

The nazis were NOT socialists despite their name. They sought support amongst workers but were antiunion and antisocialist.

Marx was not a marxist.

The Bolsheviks broke with the socialist movement and Russian communism became state capitalism which is at odds with socialist principles of freedom and human rights.

You can't be a fascist and a socialist at the same time.

Fascism is a stage of monopoly capitalism.

 

[naughtycakes]

They are but degrees and self-labeled differences of altruistic collectivism.

They are what happens after Liberals discover individual liberty.

Real Liberals, like Mill, von Humboldt, de Tocqueville, Hayek, and Rand.

You might as well add Progressive and Communist to the list.

The all mean one thing: Looters.

Get the pitchforks!/A.J.

 

[Sean]

Because democracy is suicide. I love Constitutional representative republics, liberty, an informed and well armed populace, fuzzy puppies, and pretty flowers.

And yet you're in favour of the US imposing democracy at the point of a gun on other nations. Well, as long as they vote for who the US wants in power.

 

[off2bed]

And yet you're in favour of the US imposing democracy at the point of a gun on other nations. Well, as long as they vote for who the US wants in power.

When the fuck did I say that, moron?

 

[Sean]

When the fuck did I say that, moron?

Sorry, weren't you a cheerleader for the Iraq war?

 

[off2bed]

Sorry, weren't you a cheerleader for the Iraq war?

First, I guess we need a poll on whether anyone knows the definition of "democracy" because you obviously don't.

Iraq is a "federal parliamentary republic" with a constitution.

The main thrust of anything I said about the Iraq war was that it's opponents didn't know what the hell they were talking about, and only wanted to punish Bush.

 

[naughtycakes]

As noted above, the word "fascist" is often applied too broadly. Nevertheless, you are defining the word too narrowly, if you think only Mussolini and his followers can claim it. Hitler definitely was a fascist. (Tojo probably was not; that's debatable.)

That's fine, many people in this thread seem to feel that way, so I am defining it very narrowly according to some, fine.

One of the key characteristics of fascism is the protection of private enterprise, business and commercial interests above all else. This comes from Mussolini, but it's a characteristic shared by other fascist regimes.

I do think Pinochet was a fascist.

Fascism also has a strong sense of nationalism, like Nazi Germany did, but that doesn't make Hitler a fascist.

This whole thread was made to be combative. Your motives are clear.

If I provided you with a concrete example, what would it prove?

And, if there is no concrete example, what does that prove?

You love to ask what things would prove, don't you?

Why is that?

I'm just asking for an example, to see what it is we're talking about. A socialist, fascist, Marxist leader or person, if such could exist, put a face on the term. It's ok if you don't want to or can't.

 

[PenforPrez]

The problem is, Marx thought all forms of government were tools of the capitalist pigs (especially representative government) to be used to preserve the power of the upper classes (in direct opposition to Rousseau's view of the need to sacrifice some minor liberty to government to preserve domestic tranquility via the "social contract").

Hitherto, every form of society has been based, as we have already seen, on the antagonism of oppressing and oppressed classes. But in order to oppress a class, certain conditions must be assured to it under which it can, at least, continue its slavish existence. The serf, in the period of serfdom, raised himself to membership in the commune, just as the petty bourgeois, under the yoke of the feudal absolutism, managed to develop into a bourgeois. The modern laborer, on the contrary, instead of rising with the process of industry, sinks deeper and deeper below the conditions of existence of his own class. He becomes a pauper, and pauperism develops more rapidly than population and wealth. And here it becomes evident that the bourgeoisie is unfit any longer to be the ruling class in society, and to impose its conditions of existence upon society as an overriding law. It is unfit to rule because it is incompetent to assure an existence to its slave within his slavery, because it cannot help letting him sink into such a state, that it has to feed him, instead of being fed by him. Society can no longer live under this bourgeoisie, in other words, its existence is no longer compatible with society.

Therefore, once the workers seized the means of production, government would become superfluous. So what Marx and Engels called for was essentially watered-down anarchy, not totalitarianism.

When, in the course of development, class distinctions have disappeared, and all production has been concentrated in the hands of a vast association of the whole nation, the public power will lose its political character. Political power, properly so called, is merely the organized power of one class for oppressing another. If the proletariat during its contest with the bourgeoisie is compelled, by the force of circumstances, to organize itself as a class; if, by means of a revolution, it makes itself the ruling class, and, as such, sweeps away by force the old conditions of production, then it will, along with these conditions, have swept away the conditions for the existence of class antagonisms and of classes generally, and will thereby have abolished its own supremacy as a class.

In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.

This is in direct opposition to democratic socialism like that seen currently in Sweden, Norway and Finland. There is a strong basis of private industry in all three nations (Ikea is a huge Swedish company, Nokia is a huge Finnish company), but governments levy heavy progressive taxes to fund basic necessities (health care, education, etc.) equally to all people.

People look at Soviet-style Communism and say that was what Marx intended. The problem is, that ignores Russian history. The Russians have always been a very autocratic people. Russian history is full of that. Despite the fact that Marxism derides nationalism, Lenin, Trotsky, etc. could no more escape their history than anyone else. This is why Russian democracy today is not as transparent as those of us in the West would prefer. There is very little democratic tradition in Russian history, and it was never free or fair.

On the question of whether anyone would classify as a socialist, a Marxist and a fascist all three, there is one person I can think of who would fit the bill: Pol Pot, the brutal dictator of Cambodia in the mid-to-late 1970's. He was one of the subjects of my senior thesis for my history degree, so I know a thing or two about him.

The actions of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge show that they definitely read Marx and other socialist writers, but they simply took it to an extreme, especially with the Khmer Rouge's forced evacuation of Phnom Penh (they even forced the gravely ill out of hospitals and into the countryside) and all other major cities shortly after taking power in 1975.

One facet of fascism is the defense of the strong over the weak, which Pol Pot's regime definitely displayed by shooting ANYBODY who could not or would not work as demanded. They wound up killing between one and two million of their own people in a matter of four years, and there's still millions of land mines sewn in the Cambodian countryside.

The problem with this argument is that elements of fascism conflict with elements of Marxism, so in some ways the question is moot. Marxism derides all forms of elitism, then contradicts itself by saying the proletariat should wipe out the elite. Pol Pot took the Maoist line that the peasants were the true working class, and had other classes of people marked for elimination (which led to the legendary "Killing Fields," where the condemned were forced to dig their own mass graves) since they would be unnecessary for the rebuilding of the state, and therefore superfluous and "weak."

 

[naughtycakes]

The problem is, Marx thought all forms of government were tools of the capitalist pigs (especially representative government) to be used to preserve the power of the upper classes (in direct opposition to Rousseau's view of the need to sacrifice some minor liberty to government to preserve domestic tranquility via the "social contract").



Therefore, once the workers seized the means of production, government would become superfluous. So what Marx and Engels called for was essentially watered-down anarchy, not totalitarianism.



This is in direct opposition to democratic socialism like that seen currently in Sweden, Norway and Finland. There is a strong basis of private industry in all three nations (Ikea is a huge Swedish company, Nokia is a huge Finnish company), but governments levy heavy progressive taxes to fund basic necessities (health care, education, etc.) equally to all people.

People look at Soviet-style Communism and say that was what Marx intended. The problem is, that ignores Russian history. The Russians have always been a very autocratic people. Russian history is full of that. Despite the fact that Marxism derides nationalism, Lenin, Trotsky, etc. could no more escape their history than anyone else. This is why Russian democracy today is not as transparent as those of us in the West would prefer. There is very little democratic tradition in Russian history, and it was never free or fair.

On the question of whether anyone would classify as a socialist, a Marxist and a fascist all three, there is one person I can think of who would fit the bill: Pol Pot, the brutal dictator of Cambodia in the mid-to-late 1970's. He was one of the subjects of my senior thesis for my history degree, so I know a thing or two about him.

The actions of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge show that they definitely read Marx and other socialist writers, but they simply took it to an extreme, especially with the Khmer Rouge's forced evacuation of Phnom Penh (they even forced the gravely ill out of hospitals and into the countryside) and all other major cities shortly after taking power in 1975.

One facet of fascism is the defense of the strong over the weak, which Pol Pot's regime definitely displayed by shooting ANYBODY who could not or would not work as demanded. They wound up killing between one and two million of their own people in a matter of four years, and there's still millions of land mines sewn in the Cambodian countryside.

The problem with this argument is that elements of fascism conflict with elements of Marxism, so in some ways the question is moot. Marxism derides all forms of elitism, then contradicts itself by saying the proletariat should wipe out the elite. Pol Pot took the Maoist line that the peasants were the true working class, and had other classes of people marked for elimination (which led to the legendary "Killing Fields," where the condemned were forced to dig their own mass graves) since they would be unnecessary for the rebuilding of the state, and therefore superfluous and "weak."

I don't know much about Cambodia's history or Pol Pot, so I haven't really thought about it. I know they rounded up people who wore glasses, part of eliminating the weak and/or the elite? Thanks for your thoughtful answers

 

[Sean]

First, I guess we need a poll on whether anyone knows the definition of "democracy" because you obviously don't.

Iraq is a "federal parliamentary republic" with a constitution.

The main thrust of anything I said about the Iraq war was that it's opponents didn't know what the hell they were talking about, and only wanted to punish Bush.

Ah, semantics. The last refuge of the intellectually bankrupt.

 

[philosophygirl]

Fascism is corporativism. i.e. a condition of capitalism where the state functions for the benefit of corporations. Like today's USA.

What? Fascism is a political doctrine combining ethic Nationalism with a totalitarian view that the state should control all aspects of social life!

Capitalism in a loose definition is the modern, market based commodity producing economic system controlled by *capital*, that is , purchasing-power used to hire labor for wages.

Almost the same?!

The nazis were fascists (whether or not Hitler spoke as one). The corporations were extremely powerful but that aspect has been downplayed in "history".

The nazis were NOT socialists despite their name. They sought support amongst workers but were antiunion and antisocialist.

I hate Nazis. Especially Illinois Nazis!

Marx was not a marxist.

But was he a student of german idealism and radical French enlightenment focusing on the scientific materialism, who sought to marry the two into one belief?

The Bolsheviks broke with the socialist movement and Russian communism became state capitalism which is at odds with socialist principles of freedom and human rights.

Really? ask the people persecuted in Russia at different times in history for race, religion, and or beliefs---if it was capitalism that did it or if communist Russia in her hayday had anything to do with personal freedoms??! I know some immigrants from former Russian states that would disagree with you!

You can't be a fascist and a socialist at the same time.

But you can be a monkey and type at the same time.

Fascism is a stage of monopoly capitalism.

Huh?

Shame shame---check your philosophies

 

[philosophygrrl]

Marx was not a marxist.

Now THAT would be soo conFUSing! I bet he had all kinds of problems with that in college.

He'd be all "Let me tell you about Marxism" and they'd be "uh huh, sure, like you know all about it!"

I crack myself up sometimes!!!!

 

[philosophygirl]

Now THAT would be soo conFUSing! I bet he had all kinds of problems with that in college.

He'd be all "Let me tell you about Marxism" and they'd be "uh huh, sure, like you know all about it!"

I crack myself up sometimes!!!!

hells bells he's back!

 

[underguy1]

Shame shame---check your philosophies

As you should. Your definitions are inadequate.

 

[philosophygirl]

As you should. Your definitions are inadequate.

But they are accurate on a base level. Political ideals are a tricky thing, not unlike with most philosophies---interpretation is the biggest variable and can be completely subjective in this arena

 

[MechaBlade]

There is a difference but a person can be all three.

Socialism is where capital and the means of production are owned by the community.

Marxism is where laborers overthrow the government and institute a communist govt.

Fascism is a nationalistic totalitarian regime that rigidly controls industry.

It wasn't asked by the OP, but it's worth noting (to AJ) that none of these describe Obama.