You are downvoted, but correct. Fascism is one possible failure mode of capitalism. It is capitalism stripped of brakes, guardrails, and ethics. A kind of panic-driven hyper-authoritarian capitalism that pretends unity can solve material contradictions.
> Fascism is one possible failure mode of capitalism. It is capitalism stripped of brakes, guardrails, and ethics.
This is not a useful definition of fascism, if that is what you mean. Fascism can exist entirely independently of capitalism, and has done.
Is it possible for fascism to thrive in a regulation-free capitalist world? Apparently yes. But they are not necessarily coupled.
It's a common misperception that fascism necessarily involves a merger of state and corporate power. Rather in a fascist regime, companies have no more choice in whether they further the state's aims and align with its goals than individual citizens have; they just have more devastating impacts.
As to whether Meta is aligning with the administration's goals, I don't know whether it is happening, consciously or unconsciously, in this case, but we know for certain there has been deliberate and conscious alignment elsewhere, because Zuckerberg made a big deal out of it.
Fascism is a reaction against capitalism-the-system in much the same way (but a different direction) than communism (it is "capitalist" in that, like most systems, including pre-capitalist ones, and including most claiming to be "Communist", it has a narrow self-perpetuating class controlling society by means including control of the means of production, but it does not feature the particular structure and features that defines capitalism as a system rather than a feature of other systems; fascist corporatism looks a lot, in practice, like the state capitalism that vanguardist "Communist" regimes tend to get stuck in.)
> but it does not feature the particular structure and features that defines capitalism as a system rather than a feature of other systems;
What do you mean? The defining feature of capitalism is private/corporate ownership of the means of production which is a core part of fascism as well.
No, the defining feature of capitalism-as-a-system (as opposed to capitalism-as-a-feature of systems including those which predate capitalism-as-system) is the set and preeminence of property rights, which are very different under fascism, because fascist corporatism subordinates all interests (not least of all property interest) to central authority.
Fascist corporatism is as radically opposed to capitalism as Leninist “democratic centralism” is (and, arguably, despite the opposing rhetorical stance, in very much the same substantive direction in practice.)
So where are your definition of capitalism and fascism from? Because seems to me you just made up your own definitions. To me your definition of fascism resembles much more a difinition of general authoritarianism or totalitarianism.
Maybe we should take the definition from the mouth of an expert on fascism, Mussolini, "Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power."
This attribution leads to a truly fundamentally broken reduction of what Mussolini actually thought fascism was (though his own definition of it was largely pseudointellectual drivel).
But even then, "corporatism" doesn't mean "capitalism" at all.
Companies are not helpless dames in a fascist takeover. History has proven that the people on top of the capitalist hierarchy generally actively welcome fascist elements in government.
It’s a lot easier to juice the profits of your megacorp when the power of government is vested in a single, friendly individual. Of course ten seconds of thinking exposes the fragility of such a system (they may turn on you, they may be replaced, they may destroy the entire country, etc). But Capitalism itself encourages short term, winner-takes-all all thinking. If you don’t cozy up to the wanna be autocrat and help them attain more power, you will be outcompeted by someone who does.
The path of a greedy corporate executive is practically pre-ordained in such a situation. The only question is whether the wanna be autocrat succeeds to become the real deal.
"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power"
I have news: this is bullshit.
This quote is literally falsely attributed to Mussolini. There is no evidence whatsoever that he said it. It's also somewhat at odds with things he did say (though most of that was pseudointellectual gibberish) and the way he ruled.
It's central to the 21st century misunderstanding of Fascism and it is the convenient misattribution that will not die. (Also what I was referring to up thread)
And what "corporatism" means, in a Fascist context, is not what western readers think it might mean. It is a term talking about collective organisation, not capitalism.
It's part of why the word "fascist" is so completely blunted to the point of uselessness in US debate.
