Are Fascists and Communists Really Different?
Occasionally, I am challenged over the reality of a fact I assert quite often: Namely, that fascism and communism are essentially the same. Whether they are or not is a very old controversy we can trace back to the 1940s. At the time, fascism was widely considered in Great Britain and the U.S. to be the endpoint of capitalism. Nowadays, this viewpoint has morphed into the idea that “fascism is capitalism in decay.” A young Austrian economist at that time thought this picture was absolutely false. Additionally, he thought Great Britain and the U.S. were repeating the mistakes that led to fascist Germany and the Soviet Union. In response, he wrote an iconic book rebutting the idea that fascism was the inevitable endpoint of capitalism. In the course of doing this, he concluded that fascism and communism were both slightly different variants of the same thing: socialism.
The Controversy
That young Austrian economist was named Friedrich Hayek, and the book he wrote was entitled The Road to Serfdom. He had witnessed the collapse of the German Weimar Republic into Nazi Germany. While observing this, he noted the great similarities between Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Soviet Union. So why did so many think fascism was the end result of capitalism; while communism, being the fruit of socialism, was very different?
The answer to that question appears to lie in a cosmetic difference between Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Soviet Union. Many intellectuals of the middle twentieth century thought a socialist form of government was vastly superior to capitalism, and they seized on this cosmetic difference to promote socialism over capitalism. In the Soviet Union, the means of production were almost entirely owned and managed by the state. However, in Hitler’s Germany, the means of production were ostensibly owned and managed by private owners. So why, the intellectuals of the middle twentieth century asked, should we not consider the two countries to be very different ideological creatures? Hayek’s reply was that this seeming dissimilarity was a distinction without a difference.
Fascism and Communism Are Actually Variants of Socialism
In order to claim that fascism and communism, despite their similarities, were the products of very different ideologies, an extremely dysfunctional ideological taxonomy had to be adopted. I remember learning in high school in the early 1960s that as one went further to the Right or further to the Left, the countries on the Right and on the Left became increasingly similar. Going further to the Right or the Left did not separate countries in a classification scheme represented by a straight line. Rather, that straight line was bent back on itself into a circle.
Capitalism and socialism are widely considered to be polar opposite platonic ideals. A platonic ideal is an idea about something that entities in the real world might approach in similarity, but never be exactly the same. If capitalism and socialism are polar opposite ideals, then if one country becomes more capitalist and another more socialist, they must become increasingly dissimilar. The taxonomy described above is obviously incompatible with the idea that capitalism and socialism are polar opposites.
Hayek overcame this problem with a slight modification of the definition of “socialism.” The traditional definition of socialism was that it was the state ownership of the means of production. Ownership, of course, implies control over the management and uses of the means of production. What Hayek suggested was what really mattered was who controlled the economy, no matter who the putative owners were. Did the government control more of the economy than individuals and companies? If that was the case, the country was closer to the socialist ideal. Otherwise, if individuals and companies had more control than the government, the country was closer to the capitalist ideal.
With this small redefinition, socialism is the state control of the means of production. Other than creating a more functional taxonomy of a country’s economic organization, what is the importance of this redefinition?
The answer is that the redefinition gives us greater clarity as to who or what is responsible for our economic and social problems. Make no mistake, we are discussing far more than just the economy. Almost all social problems have an economic component, and that component is, more often than not, a very large one. Who controls the economy also greatly affects how much individual freedom we have. It also affects how materially well-off we are.
No one has explained this issue better than Friedrich Hayek. In chapter 7 of The Road to Serfdom, Hayek immediately reminds us with a quote from Hilare Belloc that, “The control of the production of wealth is the control of human life itself.” Then he declares
Our freedom of choice in a competitive society rests on the fact that, if one person refuses to satisfy our wishes, we can turn to another. But if we face a monopolist we are at his mercy. And an authority directing the whole economic system would be the most powerful monopolist conceivable.
The Road to Serfdom, Chapter 7
Later, he writes
The power conferred by the control of production and prices is almost unlimited. In a competitive society the prices we have to pay for a thing, the rate at which we can get one thing for another, depend on the quantities of other things of which by taking one, we deprive the other members of society. This price is not determined by the conscious will of anybody. And if one way of achieving our ends proves too expensive for us, we are free to try other ways. … In a directed economy, where the authority watches over the ends pursued, it is certain that it would use its powers to assist some ends and to prevent the realization of others. Not our own view, but somebody else’s, of what we ought to like or dislike would determine what we should get. And since the authority would have the power to thwart any efforts to elude its guidance, it would control what we consume almost as effectively as if it directly told us how to spend our income.
The Road to Serfdom, Chapter 7
The emphasis in this quote is mine. It should be obvious to you that not only could the state completely control what you consume, but it could also cut off consumption. It could starve you to death.
Nazi Germany’s government totally controlled Germany’s economy. It did this through regulation and sometimes less savory means. The owners might ostensibly have ownership. However, government control through regulation effectively transformed those owners into apparatchiks of the state. Needless to say, the Soviet Union also completely controlled its economy. Therefore, we can only conclude both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union were slightly different variants of socialism. It is no accident that once the Soviet Union fell, Russia reemerged as a classically fascist regime.
Other Similarities Between Fascism and Communism
All actual fascist and communist regimes this world has ever experienced have been totalitarian regimes. And totalitarian regimes tend to have a number of major similarities. Their supreme leaders usually create a cult of personality around themselves and demand a certain amount of worship from their people. In addition, they usually persecute unfavored ethnic groups, and seek to create an international empire.
Infamously, Hitler’s Germany killed approximately six million jews in its death camps. Stalin created a forced labor camp system called the Gulag to hold anyone not favored by the government. These groups included the Kulaks, Poles, Ukrainians, Soviet Germans, Balts, and Estonian peoples from the Caucasus and Crimea. Estimates of the number of deaths in the Gulag vary considerably. Estimates can be found that vary between 1.7 million and 20 million people. Both Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Russia appear quite similar in this deadly respect. Until 1995, the Russian Federation continued an off-and-on war against the Chechens. In addition, at the present time, the communist power of China is guilty of genocide against the Uighurs. Fascists and communists do not show much difference in their desire to kill people they do not like.
Lessons for the United States
Other than the lesson that fascists and communists are substantially the same kind of creature, what else can we learn? One lesson emphatically should be that we continue to travel along Hayek’s Road to Serfdom at our supreme peril. The more we depend on the government to solve our problems, the more we must surrender our personal freedoms to the whims of government officials. Better to depend on ourselves and on private organizations such as companies, charities, and other organizations formed to solve specific social problems.
In addition, more government control over society, particularly the economy, is increasingly destructive to the economy. Therefore more government control would cause less economic growth than otherwise we would have had, more economic inequality as measured by the Gini index, and less quality of life as measured by the UN Human Development Index. Evidence for these assertions can be found in the following posts:
One very important question should be popping into your mind right about now. Throughout this post and many of my other essays, I vigorously question both the competence and capability of the government to solve or even ameliorate social and economic problems. Does this mean I think that no government at all is the best government? Not at all! We have a great need for a social contract to which the vast majority of the citizenry can agree. We need this social contract to protect ourselves from each other. The first social contract philosopher, Thomas Hobbes, in his book Leviathan noted that without government (he called it the sovereign) we would be living in a state of nature. The prime characteristic of a state of nature is there are no laws to protect our lives and property from the avarice of others. There would be a war of all against all. Then, in Hobbes’ words, our lives would be “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.” The only purpose of government is to defend the social contract from all enemies, foreign and domestic. That begs the question, of course, of just what the social contract should be. I examined the problem of choosing an optimum social contract in the post Balance of Social Justice with Human Freedom in the Social Contract.
The problem, however, is that fascists and communists, being substantially the same, would both champion a social contract that is ultimately inimical to human life. Are there any political forces in the U.S. that would remake our culture to resemble fascism more? Which political party wants to increasingly concentrate economic power in the state?
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