Ok, Don, remember this little line where you said: "Don: Fascism is the system where the government controls industry."
then you said:
"Don: Communism is not fascism, for one thing."
and
"Don: Socialists are not fascists."
Then that would be in simple deducive logic:
"Socialism or Communism does not emphasize on government control over the industry, because they are not fascists"
Doesn't it seem to everybody that those lines up there contradict themselves very very nastily?
Now this is confusing. Meanings have become very warped and destroyed here. Now then, even though 'socialism' and communism is technically qualified under your definition of fascism, WHY is it then socialists/communists are NOT fascists? And howcome that the Social Democracies of Europe with less emphasis on government control over industries than USSR(namely, maintaining the market as fixed reality) falls under the category of fascism, then?
The answer would be that when I asked for a clarification on 'fascism', you didn't give me the definition, but rather a feature.
"Don: My usage is purely economic. You do not have to wear jack boots and brown shirts to be a fascist."
Ah. You are saying in purely economic terms that fascists also tried to control the industry. In economic aspect, Socialism and communism is the same as fascism, and you never denied that they controlled the industry. They are not the same since the economical definition of fascism is not "government control over industry". That's just a feature of fascism, not WHAT FASCISM IS <- this is what you are talking about, isn't it?
Then this is the picture I'm getting. You put fascism in the middle, but generally, from left to right it would go: communism - socialism - social democracy - liberalism - conservatism - fascism. They got this definiton because people take pro-capitalists to the right and anti-capitalists to the left. The orders are determined by political tendencies on HOW to promote the economical system they support(ie. immediate revolution as a means of socialism=communism, violent dictatorships as promoting capitalist corporative state=fascism). People take fascism as a political term. The economical definition of fascism is still under the category of capitalism, and they have extreme policies for maintaining it. That's why they put in in the far-right.
Then the pieces fit together.
You take fascism not as a political term. You do not think fascism falls under the category of capitalism. To you, it seems fascism is a political AND economical term itself. To you it seems that fascist economics is not "capitalism", but "fascism". That explains the part where you described modern history as:
"Don: ... Post WW1 to the end of WW2 would be the rise of socialism and fascism. Post WW2 would be the contest between fascism and socialism, ending in the fall of the later ... Further, I believe ... their fundamental economic concepts are essentially the same. The fascism of the US is "fascism with a friendly face". "
It's quite obvious you support capitalism.
Then to you capitalism is that what the ordinary person would say as "classical theories of the market by Adam Smith" and "Neo-Classical revival of Smith by Milton Friedman". Namely, lassaize-faire market and monetary economics.
Therefore, the atrocities of fascism is not relevant to the failures of post-war(WWI) capitalism(since you don't think they are capitalism at all). And the gradually failing economies during 1945~1989 does not prove the inconsistencies of capitalism (since they were not capitalism but a "fascism with a friendlt face"). And the improving economic stats of after 1989 will be evidence for you to prove that capitalism is the only realistic alternative we have, since socialism and fascism both failed, huh?
So, in your terms, capitalism is not a force which steadily evolved the world to what it is today, but rather something it was cut off after 1917 and has been only revived when "really existing socialism" of communist USSR and "fascist(as you claim)" USA fell during the periods between 1970~1989.
That explains it.
I have to admit that is quite unique. Yes, that certainly explains where here your logic of pro-capitalism has derived from, and how it has derived.
I rest my case.
