So if Obama is Elected...

[ViRedd]

not by any definition of fascism that i know.

I get your point. Under fascism, there is still the illusion of private ownership ... but who actually controls the strings? So there's one of the slight differences between fascism and communism. In both cases, economic and political liberty is lost. But thanks for pointing it out.

Vi

 

[ceestyle]

That was not my point.

Saying nationalizing oil is fascism is simply untrue. Fascism entails much more than that.

Looking around the world, every country with nationalized resources is not a fascist state.

Communism and fascism are in direct opposition. One is the state for the people, the other is the people for the state. Just because "communist" states often embody fascism doesn't mean in principle their ideals coincide.

 

[ViRedd]

Statism is statism no matter how you slice it ... or by what ever name you call it.

Vi

 

[Seamaiden]

That was not my point.

Saying nationalizing oil is fascism is simply untrue. Fascism entails much more than that.

Looking around the world, every country with nationalized resources is not a fascist state.

Communism and fascism are in direct opposition. One is the state for the people, the other is the people for the state. Just because "communist" states often embody fascism doesn't mean in principle their ideals coincide.

In other words..

Yeah, yeah yeah, it looks good on paper. But in practice..?

 

[ceestyle]

Statism is statism no matter how you slice it ... or by what ever name you call it.

Vi

I think you should grab a dictionary and redefine your terms.

 

[ceestyle]

In other words..

Yeah, yeah yeah, it looks good on paper. But in practice..?

pretty much. one of the defining elements of fascism is that they are opposed to communism, so saying they are principally equal is simply incorrect.

it's like saying having a police force means having a police state.

 

[Seamaiden]

There is often either, or both, a presumption and confusion about what actually constitutes fascism versus communism. There is the idea, the philosophy, one can go with, but then there is the practice. And in practice, communism = fascism, it's just with an olive instead of a lime. I think therein lies the disagreement/confusion.

 

[Seamaiden]

pretty much. one of the defining elements of fascism is that they are opposed to communism, so saying they are principally equal is simply incorrect.

it's like saying having a police force means having a police state.

I see your point. Or do I cee your point?

 

[ceestyle]

There is often either, or both, a presumption and confusion about what actually constitutes fascism versus communism. There is the idea, the philosophy, one can go with, but then there is the practice. And in practice, communism = fascism, it's just with an olive instead of a lime. I think therein lies the disagreement/confusion.

Although in practice they may be the same, fascism is a complicated thing to define. The way it has always been explained to me is in the context of an overriding ethos that comes from a set of ideals, whatever their origin may be - religious, ideological, nazi, etc. The structure of the state is then such that everything is in support of those ideals, and all else is sacrificed or overriden.

Socialism / communism are built upon the principle that the commonwealth of the people is the priority, and all resources are diverted to the good of the people. Often, corruption and inefficiency result in a ruling class that does much more the supervise the division of state wealth into the hands of the people, and they suffer for it.

While they seem the same, and regimes may be similar in practice, the principles really couldn't differ more.

 

[gloria.greensun]

We need to take to the streets like they do in Europe and Asia, the government no longer fears THE PEOPLE, we vote for them, (or don't) We tried to impeach Clinton for having sex and we re-elect a man who had to cheat to become president and has LIED to us ( remember W.M.D's). Come on people!

 

[ceestyle]

We need to take to the streets like they do in Europe and Asia, the government no longer fears THE PEOPLE, we vote for them, (or don't) We tried to impeach Clinton for having sex and we re-elect a man who had to cheat to become president and has LIED to us ( remember W.M.D's). Come on people!

I agree with you, but I don't believe there is quite as much cause for pessimism as many say.

For example, our objection to a war long before it was even started is completely unprecedented. Compare it to Vietnam, for example. All that in a society whose media is controlled by a select few like never before. Not too bad, if you ask me, and we're only getting louder.

 

[ViRedd]

Fascism and Communism/Socialism

For many decades, the leftists have been propagating the false dichotomy that the choice confronting the world is only: communism or fascism—a dictatorship of the left or of an alleged right—with the possibility of a free society, of capitalism, dismissed and obliterated, as if it had never existed.



“The Presidential Candidates 1968,” The Objectivist, June 1968, 5.

[Some “moderates” are trying to] revive that old saw of pre-World War II vintage, the notion that the two political opposites confronting us, the two “extremes,” are: fascism versus communism.

The political origin of that notion is more shameful than the “moderates” would care publicly to admit. Mussolini came to power by claiming that that was the only choice confronting Italy. Hitler came to power by claiming that that was the only choice confronting Germany. It is a matter of record that in the German election of 1933, the Communist Party was ordered by its leaders to vote for the Nazis—with the explanation that they could later fight the Nazis for power, but first they had to help destroy their common enemy: capitalism and its parliamentary form of government.

It is obvious what the fraudulent issue of fascism versus communism accomplishes: it sets up, as opposites, two variants of the same political system; it eliminates the possibility of considering capitalism; it switches the choice of “Freedom or dictatorship?” into “Which kind of dictatorship?”—thus establishing dictatorship as an inevitable fact and offering only a choice of rulers. The choice—according to the proponents of that fraud—is: a dictatorship of the rich (fascism) or a dictatorship of the poor (communism).

That fraud collapsed in the 1940’s, in the aftermath of World War II. It is too obvious, too easily demonstrable that fascism and communism are not two opposites, but two rival gangs fighting over the same territory—that both are variants of statism, based on the collectivist principle that man is the rightless slave of the state—that both are socialistic, in theory, in practice, and in the explicit statements of their leaders—that under both systems, the poor are enslaved and the rich are expropriated in favor of a ruling clique—that fascism is not the product of the political “right,” but of the “left”—that the basic issue is not “rich versus poor,” but man versus the state, or: individual rights versus totalitarian government—which means: capitalism versus socialism.



“‘Extremism,’ or The Art of Smearing,”
Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, 180.


The main characteristic of socialism (and of communism) is public ownership of the means of production, and, therefore, the abolition of private property. The right to property is the right of use and disposal. Under fascism, men retain the semblance or pretense of private property, but the government holds total power over its use and disposal . . . .

Under fascism, citizens retain the responsibilities of owning property, without freedom to act and without any of the advantages of ownership. Under socialism, government officials acquire all the advantages of ownership, without any of the responsibilities, since they do not hold title to the property, but merely the right to use it—at least until the next purge. In either case, the government officials hold the economic, political and legal power of life or death over the citizens . . . .

Under both systems, sacrifice is invoked as a magic, omnipotent solution in any crisis—and “the public good” is the altar on which victims are immolated. But there are stylistic differences of emphasis. The socialist-communist axis keeps promising to achieve abundance, material comfort and security for its victims, in some indeterminate future. The fascist-Nazi axis scorns material comfort and security, and keeps extolling some undefined sort of spiritual duty, service and conquest. The socialist-communist axis offers its victims an alleged social ideal. The fascist-Nazi axis offers nothing but loose talk about some unspecified form of racial or national “greatness.” The socialist-communist axis proclaims some grandiose economic plan, which keeps receding year by year. The fascist-Nazi axis merely extols leadership—leadership without purpose, program or direction—and power for power’s sake.



“The Fascist New Frontier,” The Ayn Rand Column, 98.


Look at Europe . . . . Can’t you see past the guff and recognize the essence? One country is dedicated to the proposition that man has no rights, that the collective is all. The individual held as evil, the mass—as God. No motive and no virtue permitted—except that of service to the proletariat. That’s one version [communism]. Here’s another. A country dedicated to the proposition that man has no rights, that the State is all. The individual held as evil, the race—as God. No motive and no virtue permitted—except that of service to the race [fascism]. Am I raving or is this the cold reality of two continents already? Watch the pincer movement. If you’re sick of one version, we push you into the other. We get you coming and going. We’ve closed the doors. We’ve fixed the coin. Heads—collectivism, and tails—collectivism. Fight the doctrine which slaughters the individual with a doctrine which slaughters the individual. Give up your soul to a council—or give it up to a leader. But give it up, give it up, give it up. My technique . . . . Offer poison as food and poison as antidote.



“The Soul of a Collectivist,” For the New Intellectual, 76.


[Adolf Hitler on Nazism and socialism:] “Each activity and each need of the individual will thereby be regulated by the party as the representative of the general good. There will be no license, no free space, in which the individual belongs to himself.

This is Socialism—not such trifles as the private possession of the means of production. Of what importance is that if I range men firmly within a discipline they cannot escape? Let them then own land or factories as much as they please. The decisive factor is that the State, through the party, is supreme over them, regardless whether they are owners or workers. All that, you see, is unessential. Our Socialism goes far deeper . . . .

“[T]he people about us are unaware of what is really happening to them. They gaze fascinated at one or two familiar superficialities, such as possessions and income and rank and other outworn conceptions. As long as these are kept intact, they are quite satisfied. But in the meantime they have entered a new relation; a powerful social force has caught them up. They themselves are changed. What are ownership and income to that? Why need we trouble to socialize banks and factories? We socialize human beings.”



(Adolf Hitler to Hermann Rauschning, quoted in)
Leonard Peikoff, The Ominous Parallels, 231


Through the agency of three new guilds (the Food Estate, the Estate of Trade and Industry, and the Labor Front), the government assumed control of every group of producers and consumers in the country. In accordance with the method of “German socialism,” the facade of a market economy was retained. All prices, wages, and interest rates, however, were “fixed by the central authority. They [were] prices, wages, and interest rates in appearance only; in reality they [were] merely determinations of quantity relations in the government’s orders . . . . This is socialism in the outward guise of capitalism.”

The nation’s businessmen retained the responsibility to produce and suffered the losses attendant on failure. The state determined the purpose and conditions of their production, and reaped the benefits; directly or indirectly, it expropriated all profits. “The time is past,” explained the Nazi Minister of Economics, “when the notion of economic self-seeking and unrestricted use of profits made can be allowed to dominate . . . . The economic system must serve the nation.”

“What a dummkopf I was!” cried steel baron Fritz Thyssen, an early Nazi supporter, who fled the country . . . .

As to Hitler’s pledges to the poorer groups: the Republic’s social insurance budgets were greatly increased, and a variety of welfare funds, programs, agencies, and policies were introduced or expanded, including special provisions for such items as unemployment relief, workmen’s compensation, health insurance, pensions, Winter Help campaigns for the destitute, the Reich Mothers’ Service for indigent mothers and children, and the National Socialist People’s Welfare organization.


Leonard Peikoff, The Ominous Parallels, 230.


During the Hitler years—in order to finance the party’s programs, including the war expenditures—every social group in Germany was mercilessly exploited and drained. White-collar salaries and the earnings of small businessmen were deliberately held down by government controls, freezes, taxes. Big business was bled by taxes and “special contributions” of every kind, and strangled by the bureaucracy . . . . At the same time the income of the farmers was held down, and there was a desperate flight to the cities—where the middle class, especially the small tradesmen, were soon in desperate straits, and where the workers were forced to labor at low wages for increasingly longer hours (up to 60 or more per week).

But the Nazis defended their policies, and the country did not rebel; it accepted the Nazi argument. Selfish individuals may be unhappy, the Nazis said, but what we have established in Germany is the ideal system, socialism. In its Nazi usage this term is not restricted to a theory of economics; it is to be understood in a fundamental sense. “Socialism” for the Nazis denotes the principle of collectivism as such and its corollary, statism—in every field of human action, including but not limited to economics.

“To be a socialist,” says Goebbels, “is to submit the I to the thou; socialism is sacrificing the individual to the whole.”

By this definition, the Nazis practiced what they preached. They practiced it at home and then abroad. No one can claim that they did not sacrifice enough individuals.


Leonard Peikoff, The Ominous Parallels, 19.

​

 

[ViRedd]

Now then, if I am in error, I apologize to all who participate in this forum. Every one of those books listed in the above post are on the bookshelves in my home. Over the years, I have read every word in every one of them. As of this date, I cannot find even one error in them. If anyone reading this can find errors, please list them. Thanks ...


Vi

 

[UncleBuck]

... taxes will most assuredly increase, agreed? That got me thinking about my men. Many of my techs are already living on the edge. One of my techs already either has to find a place to stay up here or sleep in the Service Center at night because gasoline prices are killing. I've got another tech that had his propane shut off for months because propane prices are skyrocketing. How are my guys going to survive if the government takes even more from them and they're already teetering on the edge? These guys have families. They have children. I'm afraid I'm going to lose techs not because of a layoff, but simply because they'll not be able to afford high prices and increased taxation coupled with having to commute (high gasoline prices).

Neither candidate seems to be talking about cutting spending from the Federal Gov't and McCain even voted in favor of increasing the Federal deficit to 9 trillion dollars last year.

^^^^well, i finally found a single post from a self-identified righty worried about the deficit. my search is over for now.

but you were dead wrong about tax hikes!

note: i bumped this thread as it seems you just showed up after a hiatus and wanted to inform myself about you before getting into any debates.

 

[Prefontaine]

... taxes will most assuredly increase, agreed? That got me thinking about my men. Many of my techs are already living on the edge. One of my techs already either has to find a place to stay up here or sleep in the Service Center at night because gasoline prices are killing. I've got another tech that had his propane shut off for months because propane prices are skyrocketing. How are my guys going to survive if the government takes even more from them and they're already teetering on the edge? These guys have families. They have children. I'm afraid I'm going to lose techs not because of a layoff, but simply because they'll not be able to afford high prices and increased taxation coupled with having to commute (high gasoline prices).

Neither candidate seems to be talking about cutting spending from the Federal Gov't and McCain even voted in favor of increasing the Federal deficit to 9 trillion dollars last year.

BS... no american employer cares a rats ass about his employees any further than how much they can lower the hourly pay and still get people to come in and work... In my experience, but then working on federal construction jobs with a 12% paycut and no union protection leaves me a little jaded