Is Fascism Rotten Capitalism?

Zardnaar

Zardnaar

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I have watched this guy occasionally.


He's a socialist. I don't agree with everything he says but usually presents things well.

Basically he says that as capitalism fails elites will tolerate fascist tendencies eventually leading to outright fascism.

My philosophy is slightly different. If economic conditions detiorate people will drift to extremism in general. Ideally don't let things go that far.

Alternatively people will pick fascism if the alternative is worse eg Baltic States over Stalin's regime.

Of course the worlds not ideal and this neo liberal trickle down is BS.
 
Zardnaar said:
My philosophy is slightly different. If economic conditions detiorate people will drift to extremism in general. Ideally don't let things go that far.
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Economic or social conditions. People become anxious when they don't know what to believe

But I agree, it's mostly economic. The MAGA phenomenon is kinda like the modern American version or the native Ghost Dance (where the natives believed in they danced fervently enough the European invaders would leave). They is no magical way America can go back to where the average man can get a job right out of school w no debt, keep it for decades and support a wife and kids.

I'll check out video on my morning walk
 
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Zardnaar said:
I have watched this guy occasionally.


Basically he says that as capitalism fails elites will tolerate fascist tendencies eventually leading to outright fascism.

My philosophy is slightly different. If economic conditions detiorate people will drift to extremism in general. Ideally don't let things go that far.
Click to expand...
I would say it is sort of both: Once people start to drift towards extremism, capitalists will back the fascist variant. Hate directed at minorities and foreigners is hate not directed at capitalism.
 
Senethro said:
No, but rotten capitalism would easily transfer into fascism if the heads of corporation became an active political role and traded loyalty and service for influence.
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That's called oligarchy and is the actual form of government in most of the industrialized world. And has been for at least a century now.
 
uppi said:
I would say it is sort of both: Once people start to drift towards extremism, capitalists will back the fascist variant. Hate directed at minorities and foreigners is hate not directed at capitalism.
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The direction of causation in the US today is that the capitalists want fascism, so have been working to foster extremism. And that means a devils bargain with racists and religious extremists. The Roberts Supreme Court, for example, exists so that capitalists get what they want. It's a side effect that religious extremists do also. Not an intent.
 
I would say capitalism drives wealth inequality and that inequality drives people to extremes. The have-nots toward socialism/communism/anarchism and the (reactionary) oligarchs turn to fascism as an attempt to assert more control over the lower classes. Not sure how this fits into your theory
 
Fascism makes the state supreme. Capitalism makes the market supreme, with the (flawed) assumption that nobody is in control.

Fascism allows some latitude for private business, but only if they serve the interests of the state - for example, censoring information on social media that goes against the preferred narrative, or large corporations taking over traditional news outlets and using them to spew government propaganda, or de-banking people for political reasons.

Which wouldn't work in an actual free market. You need a monopoly or oligopoly so people can't just go somewhere else.
 
I think the two concepts are a bit orthogonal to each other
 
yeah I've heard this before. I don't have much tolerance for socialists presuming to lecture me about capitalism descending into fascism ergo we must head that off by ending capitalism, a position I find to be dishonest and unproductive.

for me, I don't presume that capitalism to be the "best" "system", because I think the best system is one which capitalism plays a relatively minor but integral part in advancing overall human freedom.
 
Fascism is a reaction to capitalism, is an authoritarian social formation that is consistent with the logic that underpins abstract capitalist philosophizing (Carl Schmitt's The Political, Carl Menger's marginalist price theory) and the subsequent social darwinist market success is proof aka "might is the evidence of right" (the corollary to might makes right) and the worship of successful market heroes and monopolists. This is extended and totalized back to politics, the great leader anointed by a cult of believing in his standard deviations of superiority (can play and win 4d chess, vanquish the bad people, etc) with whatever is packaged together to create an industrial war culture under his "speaks the real harsh truths" rule of lies and bullying.
 
fascism is more so a reaction to socialism than capitalism

capitalism isn't compatible with either of them, because the state will inevitably block it
 
Fascism is conflict theory's baby.

Everybody turns out looking like this...
 

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Economy-wise, fascism was a proper, and quite aggressive, socialism. Fascists did not set the course to go as far as communists (destroy the state, annihilate currency system), but they went quite far in the left direction. There is a good book on this topic called "The Vampire Economy: Doing Business under Fascism" written by German-Jewish economist Günter Reimann in 1939. He extensively describes steps taken by the fascist government, and my impression is that National-Socialists were staunchly socialist not only in words but in their actions as well. During six pre-war years they heavily centralized industry, banking system, introduced fixed prices on many articles, fixed salaries, fixed currency ratio, heavy capital controls and so on. They did encountered many problems other socialist economies ran into. It is a very good book, and I very much recommended to anyone interested in how fascist or socialist economies worked (work). One can download it for free from here.
 
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