Fascism vs Socialism?

[Sidestreamer]

This comment by Agna got me thinking.

Certainly I can see how fascism and socialism differ in theory. In fact theoretically, they differ quite significantly. However, in practice it seems they end up looking very much alike: All power (and control of resources and means of production) in the hands of a very few. Far fewer even than with capitalism.

Discuss.

I think that's because in practice, a true, purely socialist society can't exist without some authority or head that manages it, and they end up claiming the lion's share for them/him/herself, and you're left with communism, which for all intents and purposes is usually a fascist government with a socialist economy... if that makes sense.

Therefore a true socialist society would have means of electing leaders and holding them accountable...which is not a feature of fascist regimes.

May or may not. Socialism is strictly an economic system, not a political system. IMO it's really more of a pure economic extreme, as is capitalism, and almost any western society will borrow from both.

 

[Contumacious]

Yep, Denmark is fascist. Contumacious, your error is deliberate, which makes it worse. You conflate government regulation with fascism. Go back to Start and begin again, this time honestly.

If the economy is regulated or controlled by the government in any way shape or form you have fascism.

??I then nominate the US as a 'fascist' state. HOW much state intervention in the economy have we seen by the US government in recent times?? Or no, it must be a socialist state. The banks have been bailed out the car industry has been bailed. Or no the US must be a socio-fascist-capitalist-anarchy. I can think of instances when all these political processes have been in place in the US.

The Federal Government controls - UNCONSTITUTIONALLY - every aspect of our lives with the possible exception of passing gas. But then again I am not well versed on EPA rules.


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[Contumacious]

May or may not. Socialism is strictly an economic system, not a political system. IMO it's really more of a pure economic extreme, as is capitalism, and almost any western society will borrow from both.

Statism, ie, socialism is a socio-economic system - it is impossible to have socialism and not a dictatorship. And remember tyranny by the majority is tyranny nevertheless.

 

[manifold]

May or may not. Socialism is strictly an economic system, not a political system. IMO it's really more of a pure economic extreme, as is capitalism, and almost any western society will borrow from both.

Trying to completely segregate the economic from the political is not only purely academic, but also an exercise in mental masturbation.

 

[Diuretic]

That's just it, none of the examples given have lasted. That should be a red flag right there. And it's never been implemented successfully on a truly large scale.

A whole federation of states I'd call a large scale. And you have to look at why it failed in Yugoslavia, I think the reasons were more than economic.

The bottom line is it didn't last long enough to prove sustainability, regardless of the reasons for it's failure. Perhaps the premature failure wasn't economic, but that doesn't mean it wouldn't have failed for economic reasons eventually.

Bit of a stretch there mani. Never mind, it did fail, the federation broke up and that's all there is to it from my side of the argument. But the point is that it was successful for many years. It broke, possibly for non-economic reasons - I don't know - but the fact it did work for many years must give something to work with. For me the pointer is that a truly command economy doesn't work, consumer demand and choice have to be built into an economic system. There are probably other lessons for the economically literate but I'm not knowledgeable enough to find them.

 

[manifold]

Di,

How long is "many' years?

 

[Diuretic]

Interesting, in my experience it's almost everything. Specific types of socialism and incentives combined with human nature do not go hand in hand, as has been proven over and over. People are more often motivated by self, not collectivism.
As for you name it was a good guess based on your postings (as I really should have stated).

On human nature, history would disagree with you. Historically humans have had an awareness of the power of collective action over individual action. We wouldn't be here if our ancestors had eschewed collectivism. The one thing about human nature that I'm sure of is that humans are adaptable.

Yes, in limited applications (in scope) when collectivism satisfies the self motivation. You misinterpret the point I was making. I'm sure you're aware of the 80/20 rule. I was addressing the anarchist communist approach and other extreme socialist approaches (see above: "specific types of socialism") that stifle the 20%, the innovators and entrepreneurs. The main point being, what are your motivational factors, is it just material gain (like the 80%), or like me is it much more where material gain and money are secondary, tools to achieve something greater - economic freedom.

If I did misinterpret then that's my error. 80/20 rule - Pareto Principle?

A socialist - or any other form I suppose - economy that stifled innovation would collapse, it should be encouraged and appropriately rewarded. I agree with your point about human nature, at least in the sense of it being a mix of collectivist urge and selfish individuality - that's my interpretation, I'm not ascribing it to you - which has to be satisfied. I'm not sure of this but I think an advanced anarchist society would recognise this because an advanced anarchist society, theoretically I think, is about as much freedom as possible for the individual within society. Capitalism restricts freedom if freedom is seen in total. Anarchism desires maximum freedom for all citizens in total. Again, I stand to be corrected on those points.

 

[Diuretic]

Di,

How long is "many' years?

Buggered if I know - I'd have to Google it.

 

[Ringel05]

On human nature, history would disagree with you. Historically humans have had an awareness of the power of collective action over individual action. We wouldn't be here if our ancestors had eschewed collectivism. The one thing about human nature that I'm sure of is that humans are adaptable.

Yes, in limited applications (in scope) when collectivism satisfies the self motivation. You misinterpret the point I was making. I'm sure you're aware of the 80/20 rule. I was addressing the anarchist communist approach and other extreme socialist approaches (see above: "specific types of socialism") that stifle the 20%, the innovators and entrepreneurs. The main point being, what are your motivational factors, is it just material gain (like the 80%), or like me is it much more where material gain and money are secondary, tools to achieve something greater - economic freedom.

If I did misinterpret then that's my error. 80/20 rule - Pareto Principle?

A socialist - or any other form I suppose - economy that stifled innovation would collapse, it should be encouraged and appropriately rewarded. I agree with your point about human nature, at least in the sense of it being a mix of collectivist urge and selfish individuality - that's my interpretation, I'm not ascribing it to you - which has to be satisfied. I'm not sure of this but I think an advanced anarchist society would recognise this because an advanced anarchist society, theoretically I think, is about as much freedom as possible for the individual within society. Capitalism restricts freedom if freedom is seen in total. Anarchism desires maximum freedom for all citizens in total. Again, I stand to be corrected on those points.

Pareto Principle, essentially yes, (actually had to look it up, I'd never heard it called that before) but that actual percentages fluctuate to a small degree either way. One other way to put it is if we took all the money in the world, redistributed it equally within an unspecified period of time those who had most of the money to start with would end up getting it back, approximently 20%. A couple of rather wealthy friends of mine put it this way: 80% of the people are chasing 20% of the money while 20% of the people are chasing 80% of the money. It's a mind set, either employee based or entrepreneur/wealth based.

 

[Diuretic]

Yes, in limited applications (in scope) when collectivism satisfies the self motivation. You misinterpret the point I was making. I'm sure you're aware of the 80/20 rule. I was addressing the anarchist communist approach and other extreme socialist approaches (see above: "specific types of socialism") that stifle the 20%, the innovators and entrepreneurs. The main point being, what are your motivational factors, is it just material gain (like the 80%), or like me is it much more where material gain and money are secondary, tools to achieve something greater - economic freedom.

If I did misinterpret then that's my error. 80/20 rule - Pareto Principle?

A socialist - or any other form I suppose - economy that stifled innovation would collapse, it should be encouraged and appropriately rewarded. I agree with your point about human nature, at least in the sense of it being a mix of collectivist urge and selfish individuality - that's my interpretation, I'm not ascribing it to you - which has to be satisfied. I'm not sure of this but I think an advanced anarchist society would recognise this because an advanced anarchist society, theoretically I think, is about as much freedom as possible for the individual within society. Capitalism restricts freedom if freedom is seen in total. Anarchism desires maximum freedom for all citizens in total. Again, I stand to be corrected on those points.

Pareto Principle, essentially yes, (actually had to look it up, I'd never heard it called that before) but that actual percentages fluctuate to a small degree either way. One other way to put it is if we took all the money in the world, redistributed it equally within an unspecified period of time those who had most of the money to start with would end up getting it back, approximently 20%. A couple of rather wealthy friends of mine put it this way: 80% of the people are chasing 20% of the money while 20% of the people are chasing 80% of the money. It's a mind set, either employee based or entrepreneur/wealth based.

And it doesn't have to be an 80/20 split either way. In a capitalist (can we agree there's no pure model in reality of any form of economy? If so I'll just use the terms as if they were pure, understanding that it isn't the case in reality.) economy that imbalance will be obvious.

The split isn't representative of human nature itself but is decided by the nature of the society and it's economic structure. I'm searching for words and concepts here but I have to keep going.

Capitalism presupposes that there will be a very rich minority while the rest will have varying levels of wealth going down to extreme poverty.

Socialism presupposes that communal ownership of the means of production will reduce these extremes.

Capitalism seeks to maximise happiness for the few and doesn't attend to the misery of the many.

Socialism seeks to minimise misery for all.

As I said, these are perfect and abstract positions, not sustainable in reality. I'm only putting them forward for the purposes of discussion.

 

[Ringel05]

If I did misinterpret then that's my error. 80/20 rule - Pareto Principle?

A socialist - or any other form I suppose - economy that stifled innovation would collapse, it should be encouraged and appropriately rewarded. I agree with your point about human nature, at least in the sense of it being a mix of collectivist urge and selfish individuality - that's my interpretation, I'm not ascribing it to you - which has to be satisfied. I'm not sure of this but I think an advanced anarchist society would recognise this because an advanced anarchist society, theoretically I think, is about as much freedom as possible for the individual within society. Capitalism restricts freedom if freedom is seen in total. Anarchism desires maximum freedom for all citizens in total. Again, I stand to be corrected on those points.

Pareto Principle, essentially yes, (actually had to look it up, I'd never heard it called that before) but that actual percentages fluctuate to a small degree either way. One other way to put it is if we took all the money in the world, redistributed it equally within an unspecified period of time those who had most of the money to start with would end up getting it back, approximently 20%. A couple of rather wealthy friends of mine put it this way: 80% of the people are chasing 20% of the money while 20% of the people are chasing 80% of the money. It's a mind set, either employee based or entrepreneur/wealth based.

And it doesn't have to be an 80/20 split either way. In a capitalist (can we agree there's no pure model in reality of any form of economy? If so I'll just use the terms as if they were pure, understanding that it isn't the case in reality.) economy that imbalance will be obvious.

The split isn't representative of human nature itself but is decided by the nature of the society and it's economic structure. I'm searching for words and concepts here but I have to keep going.

Capitalism presupposes that there will be a very rich minority while the rest will have varying levels of wealth going down to extreme poverty.

Socialism presupposes that communal ownership of the means of production will reduce these extremes.

Capitalism seeks to maximise happiness for the few and doesn't attend to the misery of the many.

Socialism seeks to minimise misery for all.

As I said, these are perfect and abstract positions, not sustainable in reality. I'm only putting them forward for the purposes of discussion.

Cool, but I disagree with you description of capitalism from a pure model sense. In the pure sense of capitalism there are no employees only miriads of small business owners providing all the goods and services, hence with 100% (model) participation trading based on market set costs and income potentials.

Actually I contend the split is representative of human nature. To elaborate: human motivational factors determine the "risk" each person is willing to take to achive a specific goal, in this discussion that goal is obviously economic. There are other human nature factors involved but for time and space's sake let's focus on the current one.
Both the 80% and the 20% contain individuals that fit within each division to varying degrees. The 20% split also does not indicate those currently occupying this group, it applies to those striving to achive that level (the primary aspect of my argument).
To put it plainly: Would one be willing to potentially lose everything they have to gain eveything they want? To not be constained, socially, legally or economically, in their pursuit of their goals. Notice I included legally. Even the old Soviet Union and modern China had/have a vast criminal "underground" and I've read some recent studies that most career criminals have a strong entrepreneurial tendancy.
It is within a small minority of people's make up (social/educational/genetic) to not be harnessed, whethre the positive or negative consiquences are economic or legal.
On the other hand it is the 80% who's make up (social/educational/genetic) precludes them from being risk takers and are generally more than willing to "go with the flow" so to speak.

 

[Diuretic]

I must admit I hadn't really thought of capitalism as you described. I was thinking of the process of extracting profit from labour and then building on it. If everyone is a small business owner then how do they get their products created?

 

[Ringel05]

I must admit I hadn't really thought of capitalism as you described. I was thinking of the process of extracting profit from labour and then building on it. If everyone is a small business owner then how do they get their products created?

Under the capitalist model people learn their trade through apprenticeships, essentually short term employments before moving on to starting their own business. Basically there would be no major conglomerates only what is refered to as cottage industies.
Keep in mind this is referencing the pure capitalist model, obviously not workable as such in the current modern economic society we live in.

 

[Diuretic]

I must admit I hadn't really thought of capitalism as you described. I was thinking of the process of extracting profit from labour and then building on it. If everyone is a small business owner then how do they get their products created?

Under the capitalist model people learn their trade through apprenticeships, essentually short term employments before moving on to starting their own business. Basically there would be no major conglomerates only what is refered to as cottage industies.
Keep in mind this is referencing the pure capitalist model, obviously not workable as such in the current modern economic society we live in.

I do need to know the mechanics of capitalism though. Apprenticeships precede capitalism so that's not relevant. What differentiates capitalism from other forms of economic endeavour?

 

[Ringel05]

I must admit I hadn't really thought of capitalism as you described. I was thinking of the process of extracting profit from labour and then building on it. If everyone is a small business owner then how do they get their products created?

Under the capitalist model people learn their trade through apprenticeships, essentually short term employments before moving on to starting their own business. Basically there would be no major conglomerates only what is refered to as cottage industies.
Keep in mind this is referencing the pure capitalist model, obviously not workable as such in the current modern economic society we live in.

I do need to know the mechanics of capitalism though. Apprenticeships precede capitalism so that's not relevant. What differentiates capitalism from other forms of economic endeavour?

You want a disertation on economies?? Model, theoretic or practical? Historic, modern applications and/or a comparative discussion? Good luck.
Suffice it to say, it is my contention (based on historical, socio-anthropological with psychiatric model inclusion and historical socio-ecomomic observation), that model systems are simply that, models. Unworkable as such in the real world. Each has it's real world positives and negatives, dependant on the application of each in society.
As for apprenticeship, to my recollection it has always been an aspect of the capitalist model.

 

[Contumacious]

What differentiates capitalism from other forms of economic endeavour?

Capitalism is a social system based on the recognition of individual rights, including property rights, in which all property is privately owned.

The recognition of individual rights entails the banishment of physical force from human relationships: basically, rights can be violated only by means of force. In a capitalist society, no man or group may initiate the use of physical force against others. The only function of the government, in such a society, is the task of protecting man’s rights, i.e., the task of protecting him from physical force; the government acts as the agent of man’s right of self-defense, and may use force only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use; thus the government is the means of placing the retaliatory use of force under objective control.

 

[EriktheRed]

The recognition of individual rights entails the banishment of physical force from human relationships: basically, rights can be violated only by means of force. In a capitalist society, no man or group may initiate the use of physical force against others. The only function of the government, in such a society, is the task of protecting man’s rights, i.e., the task of protecting him from physical force; the government acts as the agent of man’s right of self-defense, and may use force only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use; thus the government is the means of placing the retaliatory use of force under objective control.

Not all governments recognise individual rights like ours does, but everything else you describe afterwards is a basic function of government in general.

 

[Contumacious]

The recognition of individual rights entails the banishment of physical force from human relationships: basically, rights can be violated only by means of force. In a capitalist society, no man or group may initiate the use of physical force against others. The only function of the government, in such a society, is the task of protecting man’s rights, i.e., the task of protecting him from physical force; the government acts as the agent of man’s right of self-defense, and may use force only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use; thus the government is the means of placing the retaliatory use of force under objective control.

Not all governments recognise individual rights like ours does, but everything else you describe afterwards is a basic function of government in general.

Incorrect, the US government no longer recognize individual rights. We have become a welfare/warfare state and the only rights that we are allowed to exercise are those that do not yet conflict with that entity.


.

 

[Diuretic]

Under the capitalist model people learn their trade through apprenticeships, essentually short term employments before moving on to starting their own business. Basically there would be no major conglomerates only what is refered to as cottage industies.
Keep in mind this is referencing the pure capitalist model, obviously not workable as such in the current modern economic society we live in.

I do need to know the mechanics of capitalism though. Apprenticeships precede capitalism so that's not relevant. What differentiates capitalism from other forms of economic endeavour?

You want a disertation on economies?? Model, theoretic or practical? Historic, modern applications and/or a comparative discussion? Good luck.
Suffice it to say, it is my contention (based on historical, socio-anthropological with psychiatric model inclusion and historical socio-ecomomic observation), that model systems are simply that, models. Unworkable as such in the real world. Each has it's real world positives and negatives, dependant on the application of each in society.
As for apprenticeship, to my recollection it has always been an aspect of the capitalist model.

No dissertation, I won't ask for what I'm not capable of. I was just asking what differentiates capitalism from other forms of economy. I thought it was the ability to not just make a profit on a transaction but to make a profit extracted from labour and then build on that profit. Surplus value and all that.

 

[Diuretic]

What differentiates capitalism from other forms of economic endeavour?

Capitalism is a social system based on the recognition of individual rights, including property rights, in which all property is privately owned.

The recognition of individual rights entails the banishment of physical force from human relationships: basically, rights can be violated only by means of force. In a capitalist society, no man or group may initiate the use of physical force against others. The only function of the government, in such a society, is the task of protecting man’s rights, i.e., the task of protecting him from physical force; the government acts as the agent of man’s right of self-defense, and may use force only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use; thus the government is the means of placing the retaliatory use of force under objective control.

Not all property is privately owned even in a capitalist system, the means of production are privately owned though - well much of it is anyway. The other points are shared with other politico-economic systems though and aren't solely markers of capitalism.

I'd say the important bit is the private ownership of the means of production.