bouzane said:
sc94597 said:
bouzane said:
@sc94597
Let's not forget that Authoritarian Communism is merely one branch of Communism (a highly conservative one at that). I don't see many similarities between Nazi Germany and the Spanish Revolutionaries in Andalusia, Catalonia and Zaragoza. Nor do I see the similarities between the Fascists and those who lived in the Makhnovia or Kibbutz regions. Sadly the conservative "Communists" of the Soviet Union have come to represent the entire Communist political spectrum.
That being said, there are still many differences between Fascism and Stalinism that make Hayek's analysis somewhat flawed. In Nazi Germany I would have been killed for my Mi'kmaq blood (as little as their is) if they didn't kill me for smoking pot first. Conversely, racism was strictly forbidden in the USSR as was anti-Semitism. Personally, I think Hayak was a hack for likening an entire ideology to another based upon their recruiting strategies. Ultra-nationalism and militarism are central to Fascism while the former is absent in Communism and the latter is absent in all but Stalinism and Maoism. Finally, Fascism employs a mixed-economy and private institutions that are typically absent in Communist societies. Italian style Fascism in particular flirted with Catholicism, the Monarchy and a free market, all of which were disposed of in the USSR.
I will admit that both ideologies are somewhat broad amalgamations of vastly different ideas and that we can make many valid comparisons between certain aspects of the two. The same can be said about Capitalism and Fascism or between any other two systems for that matter. |
You'd have to read the whole chapter for context, but Hayek's argument wasn't solely contained to recruitment strategies. My point was that it is relevant to your dialogue. Communists were more easily susceptible to being converted to fascism than liberals (which is the point of his chapter, the true enemy of Nazim AND Communism was liberalism.)Obama could've been a communist at one point and converted to fascism/corporatism.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_to_Serfdom
The Road to Serfdom is a book written by the Austrian-born economist and philosopher Friedrich von Hayek (1899–1992) between 1940–1943, in which he "warned of the danger of tyranny that inevitably results from government control of economic decision-making through central planning",[1] and in which he argues that the abandonment of individualism and classical liberalism inevitably leads to a loss of freedom, the creation of an oppressive society, the tyranny of a dictator and the serfdom of the individual.
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Also, my original point still stands. StrawmanSlayer's foolish assertion that Communists, who by definition employ a planned economy that forbids private enterprise, end up in bed with private businesses is just that, foolish.
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Correct me if I am wrong, but you and SocialistSlayer were specifically talking about Obama, not speaking in general about communists. Also, one can be a communist and still not outrightly abolish private enterprise through revolution. There is a progressive ideology that one can reach that ideal through incrementalism and not revolution. Even Marx said that an economy must be socialist before communism (state-less, pure egalitarianism) can be attained. It is logically consistent to say that Obama is a communist and his policies work toward communism (the ideal) without discretely reaching it (as if turning a switch.) For example, one can choose to cooperate with a certain portion of the private market with the ideal of destroying the market entirely, and then nationalizing it, effectively abolishing private ownership.
