Sam Stone said:
Let’s see… The socialists controlled the means of production, but the Nazis let businesses do what they want, as long as that happens to be exactly what the government wants. How is this not ‘controlling the means of production’?
“The socialists controlled the means of production”? You’re misinterpreting the Communist Manifesto here, Sam. The idea is that the workers were to control the means of production. You infer that the (Marxist) government was supposed to do so. Not at all accurate. The Marxist ideal was designed to move the government out of the picture as the people themselves took control of industry. The methods of achieving this are varied. We could begin a discussion here on the methods of Trotsky and Stalin, but apparently we still need to go over the rudiments first. The advanced course will have to wait.
The main difference between Nazism and Socialism is that Nazis would allow business owners to maintain ownership, while relinquishing control of the business to the government.
That’s what I said.
Thus, fascists tend to elect strong, charismatic leaders while socialists tend to elect bureaucrats.
Is that right? Would you say that Marshall Tito, V.I. Lenin and Fidel Castro were uncharismatic? Hardly. The issue here is that for a state with a highly centralized government to succeed, it needs a strong, charismatic leader to keep it alive. Case in point: the death of Marshall Tito was the death knell of Yugoslavia, which hardly lasted ten years after he was gone. The death of Castro will have a similar effect on Cuba.
Both philosophies are ultimately destructive, because neither are based on the notion of inalienable rights of individuals. When you throw the rights of individuals out in exchange for the ‘greater good’, you open the door to the Gulag, Dachau, or to a much lesser extent things like the Drug War, zero-tolerance laws, and overbearing regulation.
This is vague enough; who can disagree? There’s a crucial addendum I must make: if the government has too little involvement with the affairs of its citizens, we wind up with corporations and other gangs of robber-barons filling the vacuum. Excessive deregulation can be oppressive, too. Insufficient regulation is a lot like speeding in a '65 Corvair toward Love Canal. Anarchy sounds great on paper, but in practice? Too many people get hurt. No thanks.
