Communism vs. Fascism... again

Once again, a break down in communication skills is causing us to argue the inarguable here.

We cannot discuss “fascism versus communism” outside of the realm of “IDEOLOGY”. If ideology is defined as a collection of ideas concerning a specific topic, then we can discuss fascism and its attributes (and by extension, communism and it’s attributes) either from an “ideological” point of view, or from an “historical” point of view. There is no other possibility.

Now, knowing that we have ALL (at least the three Bund founders) agreed that true “communism” has never existed on a national level at any point in world history, I fail to see how we can take the “historical” point of view on that side of the coin in this argument. Unless, of course, you have discovered a “communist” system of government that WORKED and failed to tell the world…

So, that said, I am going to try and show you ONE MORE TIME that communism and fascism are NOT interchangeable terms describing totalitarian regimes, and that the “communism” of the USSR was NOT just another “fascist” government calling itself something else.

You seem to agree that fascism requires the State to take the position that ONE group (race, ethnicity, culture, religion, et al) is SUPERIOR to all others, and that it is this superiority that is the primary motivator behind the State’s effort to “regain” that which was taken away-lost to the INFERIOR group or groups. The Nazi’s fundamental drive to eradicate European Judaism to further the third Reich is a sound historical example, and Iran’s fundamental drive to re-establish the Persian hegemony in the region at the expense of Israel is a sound contemporary one. This is a fundamental truth of ALL incarnations of fascism over the last 100 years, in my opinion.

Communism strives, on an ideological level, to remove all boundaries and differences from a society by creating a “class-less” culture in which ALL people of ALL backgrounds are EQUAL, socially, economically, legally, and institutionally. If you have an alternative ideological definition of this socio-political term that I am unaware of, please feel free to share it with us all.

In the USSR, the STATE owned all facets of industry and commerce (outside of some very complicated and convoluted “5 year Plans” that I won’t go into here *shudder*), while in Nazi Germany, NO industry was OWNED by the State or the National Socialist Party. However, ALL the largest and most influential owners of industry were Nazi Party members, by simple yet compelling recruitment practices. Any influence from the Nazis towards industry (and there was mountains of it, I don’t deny) was outside of established institutional control of government. Thus, in Nazi Germany, we see an institutionalized “ruling class” of NSDAP and military elite ALONGSIDE the barons of industry and commerce… a fact that flies in the face of an argument stating that “communism” was another facet of “fascism”.

Both Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s USSR shared many totalitarian features in their respective regimes, no one can deny this fact… but that does not mean that fascism and communism are simply two sides to the same coin. They are not.