These passages come the closest to giving a substantive definition, although the author never quite brings the picture into complete focus.
Some people have reacted to Fascism by saying that it's just the same as socialism. In part, this arises from the fact that "fascism" is a word used loosely to denote all the non-Communist dictatorships of the 1920s and 1930s, and by extension to refer to the most powerful and horrible of these governments, that of German National Socialism.Erik Von Kuehnelt-Leddihin also noted what the author here did; Marxists and Fascists were competitors, not opposites.The Nazis never claimed to be Fascists, but they did continually claim to be socialists, whereas Fascism, after 1921, repudiated socialism by name. Although Fascism had some influence on the National Socialist German Workers' Party, other influences were greater, notably Communism and German nationalism.
A. James Gregor has argued that Fascism is a Marxist heresy, (31) a claim that has to be handled with care. Marxism is a doctrine whose main tenets can be listed precisely: class struggle, historical materialism, surplus-value, nationalization of the means of production, and so forth. Nearly all of those tenets were explicitly repudiated by the founders of Fascism, and these repudiations of Marxism largely define Fascism. Yet however paradoxical it may seem, there is a close ideological relationship between Marxism and Fascism. We may compare this with the relationship between, say, Christianity and Unitarianism. Unitarianism repudiates all the distinctive tenets of Christianity, yet is still clearly an offshoot of Christianity, preserving an affinity with its parental stem.
In power, the actual institutions of Fascism and Communism tended to converge. In practice, the Fascist and National Socialist regimes increasingly tended to conform to what Mises calls "the German pattern of Socialism." (32) Intellectually, Fascists differed from Communists in that they had to a large extent thought out what they would do, and they then proceeded to do it, whereas Communists were like hypnotic subjects, doing one thing and rationalizing it in terms of a completely different and altogether impossible thing.
Fascists preached the accelerated development of a backward country. Communists continued to employ the Marxist rhetoric of world socialist revolution in the most advanced countries, but this was all a ritual incantation to consecrate their attempt to accelerate the development of a backward country. Fascists deliberately turned to nationalism as a potent myth. Communists defended Russian nationalism and imperialism while protesting that their sacred motherland was an internationalist workers' state. Fascists proclaimed the end of democracy. Communists abolished democracy and called their dictatorship democracy. Fascists argued that equality was impossible and hierarchy ineluctable. Communists imposed a new hierarchy, shot anyone who advocated actual equality, but never ceased to babble on about the equalitarian future they were "building". Fascists did with their eyes open what Communists did with their eyes shut. This is the truth concealed in the conventional formula that Communists were well-intentioned and Fascists evil-intentioned.
Marxists and Fascists were competitors, not opposites.
Marxists and Fascists were competitors, not opposites.
Simple - there's not a dime's worth of difference between them. Under facism you supposedly had "private ownership" of the means of production, but as the owners had no control, the "ownership" was meaningless.
Other than that little fillip, it's the same game - goobermint control of everything.