Well, that was reasonably interesting, a bit less clueless than the usual libertarian rants but I stopped reading once I heard about the whole czars business again

Lets see, to understand what people mean I think it's necassary to understand different types of government. I might be a little off but I'm definitely a lot more on track than half the posters of this thread let alone the original thing posted.
Democratic(usually fairly right wing): Private and public sectors, with the right wing generally taxing less(and spending less) and waging more wars.
And the left wing taxing more but spending more on infrastructure and important projects as well as ongoing stuff like healthcare

Socialism: A left wing government that spends a lot of ongoing costs as well as infrastructure, and taxes the rich a bit more harshly than otherwise. A significant public sector along with a heavily regulated private sector. For the most part the idea of co ordinating things together for the greater good and not to oppress workers.

Communism: A state that is run by democratically elected people who run in their local worker councils but which then elect them etc.
Vast majority of businesses are run by their employees (with bureaucracy doing a bit of coordinating) but with public sector running a bit of things and controlling resources. Where internationalism and the struggles of workers is paramount regardless of what country they are in. Being based on the workings of marx and that there should be no descrimination of any kind, it also heavily promotes women's, ethnic minority's and to a much less extent religous minority's rights. Communism also generally spends a lot on infrastructure and especially on things like healthcare and things that benefit the average person.


Anarcho syndicalism: A movement for the abolition of the state and private property (but not personal property) rights. I.e. you can own a house etc just not a billion miles of farmland or a factory (communism is also for the abolition of private but not personal property). Also advocates businesses being run by their employees. This I believe is somewhat utopian and the movement is pretty much dead anyway.

Other types of anarchists: Mostly just people who are rebels without a cause. Or the whole green intellectual kind who think that people are too stupid to elect anyone good and the world is fucked so obviously fail to achieve anything useful whatsoever.

Fascism(or national syndicalism): First and foremost the idea that the glory/prosperity of the nation is paramount and should be achieved by key leaders organising the economy/military and bringing the nation forward. These leaders have the support of the private sector because the private sector often stands to profit a fair bit from it, including lowering workers wages and treating them poorly in order to distribute labour (or money essentially) elsewhere instead of consumer spending. Private industry is however under the power of the government and they generally are forced to make things relevent to the war effort. Although I'm sure excessive nationalising of the private industry that supports said fascist government is unlikely as the power base would turn against them. Fascist governments typically also take a lot of their power base from the clergy.

Things like healthcare and infrastructure spending are also focused on as ultimately fascist governments typically want to make their countries into as much of an economic/military powerhouse as they can. Yes hitler spent money on healthcare but for pretty different reasons than the democrats (and ultimately any nation wants a more effeciant system for itself if it doesn't particlarly harm any power groups they care about).

National syndicalism/Fascism is the logical extension of extreme nationalism and or militarism. In more extreme examples fascism also wants social unity and hates things like free thought and abstract art (hitler banned jazz music for instance). This authoritarian nature also regards contempt for civil liberties.

Stalinism: Removal of worker councils and everything being run by a state planning bureaucracy.
"An island of socialism cannot survive in a sea of capitalism"
"In order for socialism to survive we must do 100 years of industrialisation in 10"

NOTE that the definition of socialism is somewhat disputed, and when he refers to socialism above he means revolutionary communism not reformist social democratism (which is what I mean by socialism above).
Basically, Stalinism was Stalin's conclusion on what the Soviet Union should do to survive in the world and to increase it's military(and industrial capacity for that military) to a level where the soviet union won't just easily be invaded and replaced by a regime that bourgeoisie countries find more acceptable.

And effectively combines some elements of communism and socialism with fascism. For instance the idea that a country's people should be prosperous and your country should have as high a population as possible taken to an extreme can mean the banning of homosexuality. Which is also seen as a social nuisance. With the focus on nationalism and militarism, things like social cohesion and hating gays, free thought and abstract art and even ethnic minorities started to pop up in Stalin's line of thinking. Since Stalinism effectively creates the state bureaucracy and then everyone else it is not communism(a state with only one class, which suffice to say is quite complicated to achieve).

Almost all of the "communist" countries are based on Stalin's teachings and policy. (Including china, cuba etc) with possibly the notable exceptions of Vietnam, and Albania to a lesser extent.




Anyway, fascism has some of the same policies as socialism (i.e. like healthcare) but for totally different reasons so to compare two on such a basis is idoitic. The rampant militarism of Bush was far more fascist than anything the democrats have done. Let alone his war on terror and wearing down of civil liberties.

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