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As a state tends toward either communism or capitalism, it starts dictating the economy more and more, until it hits the ceiling and becomes a totally dictated

As a state tends toward either communism or capitalism, it starts dictating the economy more and more, until it hits the ceiling and becomes a totally dictated war economy, where a fundamentally fascist ideology replaces previous values. At that point, war is inevitable, because a war economy requires active warfare, and war provides ample opportunies for pilfering at multiple levels, both home and abroad. Fascism is not to blame, it is a means to an end for the economy at large. Ultimately, the issue is uneven distribution of wealth and power.

kuerbel 10mo ago
You are downvoted, but correct. Fascism is one possible failure mode of capitalism. It is capitalism stripped of brakes, guardrails, and ethics. A kind of panic-driven hyper-authoritarian capitalism that pretends unity can solve material contradictions.
- exasperaited 10mo ago
  > Fascism is one possible failure mode of capitalism. It is capitalism stripped of brakes, guardrails, and ethics. This is not a useful definition of fascism, if that is what you mean. Fascism can exist entirely independently of capitalism, and has done. Is it possible for fascism to thrive in a regulation-free capitalist world? Apparently yes. But they are not necessarily coupled. It's a common misperception that fascism necessarily involves a merger of state and corporate power. Rather in a fascist regime, companies have no more choice in whether they further the state's aims and align with its goals than individual citizens have; they just have more devastating impacts. As to whether Meta is aligning with the administration's goals, I don't know whether it is happening, consciously or unconsciously, in this case, but we know for certain there has been deliberate and conscious alignment elsewhere, because Zuckerberg made a big deal out of it.
  - eunoia 10mo ago
    Companies are not helpless dames in a fascist takeover. History has proven that the people on top of the capitalist hierarchy generally actively welcome fascist elements in government. It’s a lot easier to juice the profits of your megacorp when the power of government is vested in a single, friendly individual. Of course ten seconds of thinking exposes the fragility of such a system (they may turn on you, they may be replaced, they may destroy the entire country, etc). But Capitalism itself encourages short term, winner-takes-all all thinking. If you don’t cozy up to the wanna be autocrat and help them attain more power, you will be outcompeted by someone who does. The path of a greedy corporate executive is practically pre-ordained in such a situation. The only question is whether the wanna be autocrat succeeds to become the real deal.
  - cycomanic 10mo ago
    > > Fascism is one possible failure mode of capitalism. It is capitalism stripped of brakes, guardrails, and ethics. > This is not a useful definition of fascism, if that is what you mean. Fascism can exist entirely independently of capitalism, and has done. I think you should look up the definition and history of fascism. You're correct about totalitarism, but fascism is by definition capitalist.
    - dragonwriter 10mo ago
      Fascism is a reaction against capitalism-the-system in much the same way (but a different direction) than communism (it is "capitalist" in that, like most systems, including pre-capitalist ones, and including most claiming to be "Communist", it has a narrow self-perpetuating class controlling society by means including control of the means of production, but it does not feature the particular structure and features that defines capitalism as a system rather than a feature of other systems; fascist corporatism looks a lot, in practice, like the state capitalism that vanguardist "Communist" regimes tend to get stuck in.)
      - cycomanic 10mo ago
        > but it does not feature the particular structure and features that defines capitalism as a system rather than a feature of other systems; What do you mean? The defining feature of capitalism is private/corporate ownership of the means of production which is a core part of fascism as well.
        dragonwriter 10mo ago
        No, the defining feature of capitalism-as-a-system (as opposed to capitalism-as-a-feature of systems including those which predate capitalism-as-system) is the set and preeminence of property rights, which are very different under fascism, because fascist corporatism subordinates all interests (not least of all property interest) to central authority. Fascist corporatism is as radically opposed to capitalism as Leninist “democratic centralism” is (and, arguably, despite the opposing rhetorical stance, in very much the same substantive direction in practice.)
  - throwaway-11-1 10mo ago
    are you saying IBM was FORCED to help the reich? like c'mon, what did Mussolini say about Corporatism again?
    - exasperaited 10mo ago
      OK... drum roll please! I suppose you mean this famous quote: "Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power" I have news: this is bullshit. This quote is literally falsely attributed to Mussolini. There is no evidence whatsoever that he said it. It's also somewhat at odds with things he did say (though most of that was pseudointellectual gibberish) and the way he ruled. https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Talk:Benito_Mussolini https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Talk:Benito_Mussolini It's simply wrong. It is one of the great falsely-attributed quotations that will not die. https://blog.skepticallibertarian.com/2013/02/07/fake-quote-files-mussolini-on-fascism-and-corporatism/ https://blog.skepticallibertarian.com/2013/02/07/fake-quote-... It's central to the 21st century misunderstanding of Fascism and it is the convenient misattribution that will not die. (Also what I was referring to up thread) And what "corporatism" means, in a Fascist context, is not what western readers think it might mean. It is a term talking about collective organisation, not capitalism. It's part of why the word "fascist" is so completely blunted to the point of uselessness in US debate.
embedding-shape 10mo ago
You're saying this like it's some absolute truth, that any state naturally gravitates towards either communism or capitalism, but based on the amount of states in the world that haven't automatically turned into either communistic or capitalistic hell-holes, it seems like this only happens to a small fraction of the states in the world.
- cluckindan 10mo ago
  > any state naturally gravitates towards either communism or capitalism That is not something I wrote.
  - embedding-shape 10mo ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paraphrase https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paraphrase VS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quotation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quotation I suppose.
    - cluckindan 10mo ago
      More like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man

kuerbel 10mo ago

You are downvoted, but correct. Fascism is one possible failure mode of capitalism. It is capitalism stripped of brakes, guardrails, and ethics. A kind of panic-driven hyper-authoritarian capitalism that pretends unity can solve material contradictions.

exasperaited 10mo ago
> Fascism is one possible failure mode of capitalism. It is capitalism stripped of brakes, guardrails, and ethics. This is not a useful definition of fascism, if that is what you mean. Fascism can exist entirely independently of capitalism, and has done. Is it possible for fascism to thrive in a regulation-free capitalist world? Apparently yes. But they are not necessarily coupled. It's a common misperception that fascism necessarily involves a merger of state and corporate power. Rather in a fascist regime, companies have no more choice in whether they further the state's aims and align with its goals than individual citizens have; they just have more devastating impacts. As to whether Meta is aligning with the administration's goals, I don't know whether it is happening, consciously or unconsciously, in this case, but we know for certain there has been deliberate and conscious alignment elsewhere, because Zuckerberg made a big deal out of it.
- eunoia 10mo ago
  Companies are not helpless dames in a fascist takeover. History has proven that the people on top of the capitalist hierarchy generally actively welcome fascist elements in government. It’s a lot easier to juice the profits of your megacorp when the power of government is vested in a single, friendly individual. Of course ten seconds of thinking exposes the fragility of such a system (they may turn on you, they may be replaced, they may destroy the entire country, etc). But Capitalism itself encourages short term, winner-takes-all all thinking. If you don’t cozy up to the wanna be autocrat and help them attain more power, you will be outcompeted by someone who does. The path of a greedy corporate executive is practically pre-ordained in such a situation. The only question is whether the wanna be autocrat succeeds to become the real deal.
- cycomanic 10mo ago
  > > Fascism is one possible failure mode of capitalism. It is capitalism stripped of brakes, guardrails, and ethics. > This is not a useful definition of fascism, if that is what you mean. Fascism can exist entirely independently of capitalism, and has done. I think you should look up the definition and history of fascism. You're correct about totalitarism, but fascism is by definition capitalist.
  - dragonwriter 10mo ago
    Fascism is a reaction against capitalism-the-system in much the same way (but a different direction) than communism (it is "capitalist" in that, like most systems, including pre-capitalist ones, and including most claiming to be "Communist", it has a narrow self-perpetuating class controlling society by means including control of the means of production, but it does not feature the particular structure and features that defines capitalism as a system rather than a feature of other systems; fascist corporatism looks a lot, in practice, like the state capitalism that vanguardist "Communist" regimes tend to get stuck in.)
    - cycomanic 10mo ago
      > but it does not feature the particular structure and features that defines capitalism as a system rather than a feature of other systems; What do you mean? The defining feature of capitalism is private/corporate ownership of the means of production which is a core part of fascism as well.
      - dragonwriter 10mo ago
        No, the defining feature of capitalism-as-a-system (as opposed to capitalism-as-a-feature of systems including those which predate capitalism-as-system) is the set and preeminence of property rights, which are very different under fascism, because fascist corporatism subordinates all interests (not least of all property interest) to central authority. Fascist corporatism is as radically opposed to capitalism as Leninist “democratic centralism” is (and, arguably, despite the opposing rhetorical stance, in very much the same substantive direction in practice.)
- throwaway-11-1 10mo ago
  are you saying IBM was FORCED to help the reich? like c'mon, what did Mussolini say about Corporatism again?
  - exasperaited 10mo ago
    OK... drum roll please! I suppose you mean this famous quote: "Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power" I have news: this is bullshit. This quote is literally falsely attributed to Mussolini. There is no evidence whatsoever that he said it. It's also somewhat at odds with things he did say (though most of that was pseudointellectual gibberish) and the way he ruled. https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Talk:Benito_Mussolini https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Talk:Benito_Mussolini It's simply wrong. It is one of the great falsely-attributed quotations that will not die. https://blog.skepticallibertarian.com/2013/02/07/fake-quote-files-mussolini-on-fascism-and-corporatism/ https://blog.skepticallibertarian.com/2013/02/07/fake-quote-... It's central to the 21st century misunderstanding of Fascism and it is the convenient misattribution that will not die. (Also what I was referring to up thread) And what "corporatism" means, in a Fascist context, is not what western readers think it might mean. It is a term talking about collective organisation, not capitalism. It's part of why the word "fascist" is so completely blunted to the point of uselessness in US debate.

embedding-shape 10mo ago

You're saying this like it's some absolute truth, that any state naturally gravitates towards either communism or capitalism, but based on the amount of states in the world that haven't automatically turned into either communistic or capitalistic hell-holes, it seems like this only happens to a small fraction of the states in the world.

cluckindan 10mo ago
> any state naturally gravitates towards either communism or capitalism That is not something I wrote.
- embedding-shape 10mo ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paraphrase https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paraphrase VS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quotation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quotation I suppose.
  - cluckindan 10mo ago
    More like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man