Not sure if this belongs in FQ.
I’ve been reading that late-stage Capitalism often leads to Facism.
When that has been the case historically, what comes after Facism?
You’ve been reading this where?
Stranger
There are so many variables to this, I don’t think this is an FQ question. My understanding of History says this is categorically untrue with little or no data to support it.
I’m going to move this to In My Humble Opinion so we can have a conversation about this.
Indeed.
I can’t think of any country today (existing now) that I would label as fascist.
The most recent examples I can think of would be Spain and Portugal but that was in the 1970s. (Haiti maybe?)
Dictatorship, totalitarianism and cult of personality regimes. Like Mussolini, Hitler, Franco and Hirohito. But many other types of governments can lead to these as well without being fascist, like Stalin, Castro and Mao Zedong.
Wouldn’t 1930’s Germany be an example? Not arguing, I’m sincerely asking to be educated on the question.
That would be one country, a fairly new country at that. Not a trend.
Where did you see this? I need to see their logic.
Well, acording to Polybius’ cycle:
- Kingship: rule by single virtuous leader based on natural order and justice
- Tyranny: rule by single corrupt leader characterized by oppression and self-interest
- Aristocracy: rule by small group of virtuous elites emphasizing merit and wisdom
- Oligarchy: rule by small group of corrupt elites marked by greed and exploitation
- Democracy: rule by majority of citizens based on equality and popular participation
- Ochlocracy: rule by mob or masses characterized by chaos and instability
So I guess fascism is closest to Oligarchy which leads to democracy.
Either that or it’s Ochlocracy and so must be followed by Kingship.
Indeed, this is part of the issue. Capitalism is economics and Fascism is Government.
Do you classify Weimar Germany as being in “late-stage Capitalism”?
Stranger
That’s a pretty dubious assertion. The three nations that were taken over by fascists were Italy, Germany and Spain. While they were clearly capitalist, to a greater or lesser degree, I don’t know what could possibly make them “late stage capitalist”. I mean both Germany and Italy were young counties thar has been a patchwork of small monarchies (or small monarchies and big monarchies) a few decades earlier. it’s hard to describe them as “late stage” anything
I’m apparently way out of touch, since I had to Google the term “late stage capitalist.”
Here’s a succinct two-year-old paragraph describing it. (All [sic])
The Washington Post technology columnist Taylor Lorenz on Sunday tweeted that “People are like ‘why are kids so depressed it must be their PHONES!’ But never mention the fact that we’re living in a late stage capitalist hellscape during an ongoing deadly pandemic w record wealth inequality, 0 social safety net/job security, as climate change cooks the world … u have to be delusional to look at life in our country rn and have any amt of hope or optimism.”
Naturally, right-wingers have climbed all over this, because they cannot admit any truth to these obvious, if perhaps hysterically stated, facts.
The radical solutions presented in the anti-capitalist agenda are, to be blunt, more than just simplistic, they are dangerously stupid. Trying to assemble a multitude of manufactured fear campaigns to portray capitalism as being in its dying days, to be replaced by some neo-Marxist, naturopathic ideology, is not only opportunist, it is extremely deceptive. It has insidiously wormed its way from campus lecture halls to activist campaigns to media groups to local governments. If enough people talk about the inevitable end of capitalism, then it must be true.
To get back to the OP, “late stage capitalism” as defined here has never existed before today, so it’s never led to anything.
More broadly, capitalism has indeed been in trouble, even crisis, many times in many places, sometimes, as in the 1930s, globally. Capitalism has also been attacked for its effects, mostly on the working class, from its inception after the Industrial Revolution. Marx famously did, hence the reference here. Are all attacks on capitalism neo-Marxist? Perhaps they are in the right-wing echosphere, but not in my understanding of economic history. Have any countries turned from capitalism to fascism? Several European countries notoriously did, Italy doing so in the 1920s, with Spain and Germany following. Were they threatened by some naturopathic ideology? No good answer follows, as that is not a thing. Socialists and Communists were making gains because of the intense oppression of the working class, but now we’re smushing causes and effects together haphazardly.
The conspicuous global lack of fascism since the 1930s seems to have created a hole that allows prognosticators to claim that therefore fascism is overdue for a return, much like inactive volcanoes sooth some residents and alarm others. Since my understanding of fascism is an ideology that calls for state control of industry, a form of industrial capitalism that is oppressive of workers, the right-wing ideal of government allying with a small number of capitalists to maximize profits would seem to closely resemble fascism in a modern neo mode. Attacking that future, even with some loosey-goosey natural capitalism, is not leading to fascism but trying proactively to avert it.
Mostly, though, the problem lies in letting people invent enemies, ideologies, and terminology to distort both history and current-day reality. Don’t give in to their Orwellian black is white propaganda. They want to roll over you, stifle your protests, and above all take your money. Just say no.
I never gave the idea much thought (Capitalism etc) but have seen it a few times in print. Random internet strangers. Assuming that there might be real life historical examples, I asked my question. My howling ignorance has been fought and vanquished.
So I assume what random internet dudes mean by “late-stage Capitalism often leads to Facism” is the much more mundane “economic crises often lead to political instability, which can allow authoritarian regimes to seize power”. There’s nothing particularly groundbreaking or controversial about that claim.
Though even that claim doesn’t apply all that much to specifically fascist authoritarian regimes. While economic crises were a contributing factor to the rise of the Nazis, they had subsided, and it looked like the social Democrats had done enough to weather the storm, when the Nazis were able to win enough electoral support to seize power (no comment on any more recent political events that this might remind you of 
)
Macy’s White Sale!
The economics of capitalism is, perforce, supported by government structures. Indeed, that is true of all economic systems.
Fascism is usually defined with an economics component, e.g.
A system of government marked by centralization of authority under a dictator, a capitalist economy subject to stringent governmental controls [and more things]
(from American Heritage Dictionary)
It’s pretty hard to separate economic systems from government. That said, I agree, for other reasons, that the statement under discussion has no basis in history, and is unlikely to ever be true.
I’ve run across the argument in progressive internet circles that fascism is simply the natural end development of capitalism, and isn’t all that different from it anyway; no idea how common the belief is in the wider world.
Oligarchy describes pretty well the state of the Soviet Union after 1990 or so. So much resources were privatized and went into the hands of those holding the right positions at the right time. That capitol went to buy real estate (especially London and New York) and yachts.
The middle class (those who might have some savings and maybe a dacha in the country) disappeared so quickly in Russia that Putin was seen as the guy who will tell us what to do and make it all good. So half right.
If you have money there (and drive a nice BMW or black SUV - invariably black with tinted windows) you are either a foreigner earning Euros or Dollars, or a member of some organised crime.
One of the telling signs (in hindsight) is how Putin changed the flag from the hammer & sickle - meant to represent the proletariat solidarity between agricultural and industrial workers with the very boring tri-color still in use.
Marx wrote
the collapse of capitalism will be the act of the working class and thus a political act
so he was perhaps equating Main Street and Wall Street more than his pal Engels
That is where the USA is headed. Dunno how many boxes need to be checked off, yet IMO Trump is a Fascist and will put down any revolutions. There will be no tea thrown into Boston Harbor and the “protest allowed” zones in NYC will continue to be enforced by the NYPD.
The principles laid down by the likes of Jefferson and Lincoln who said in Gettysburg
that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth
I’d really like to go with Lincoln’s wisdom over Marx and Engels, yet Abe did say this on a battlefield in a Civil War.
The tri-color Russian flag is over three hundred years old; the current incarnation was restored as the Russian flag in the early 1990s with Boris Yeltsin being the main perpetrator, when Putin was busy grifting in St. Petersburg.