Guardian: Marxism on the Rise!

Dexters_Indignation

Here they come!!!!

antrobus

Dexters_Indignation wrote: »

Here they come!!!!

Which one is Ed Balls? I can't really tell under those false beards.

zagubov

chewmylegoff wrote: »

i suppose you could argue that all dictatorships, including e.g. stalinist russia, reflect right wing ideology in that they are authoritarian by nature.

there are plenty of totalitarian regimes which have hidden behind the flimsy facade of being based on left wing thinking, but replacing one set of feudal overlords with another doesn't really equate to social equality if you ask me.

They were polar opposites but just like the polar regions they seemed awfully similar when you went there.

Someone did say for all practical purposes the only defining difference was concerning religion. In communist ones you couldn't go to church. In fascist ones you had to go to church but it better be the right one.

The biggest real differences was that fascist dictatorships were usually military councils/juntas taking over parliament, supending the constitution. They were transient interruptions in the normal life of the country and they had no stable mechanism for succession of leaders, so they reverted to civilan rule when the dictatorship ended.

Communist dictatorships were under civilian rule rather than military. They kept parliaments open and had regular but phoney elections. Anyone bright enough to be a threat could be incorporated into the ruling party as there was no ethnic purity nonsense. It gave it a potential stability that no fascist government ever had.

This makes them potentially more stable and I think that most communist countries outlived fascist ones becasue of this ( and China, Vietnam, Cuba just keep on going).

antrobus

zagubov wrote: »

....
The biggest real differences was that fascist dictatorships were usually military councils/juntas taking over parliament, supending the sconstitution. They were trasnient interruptions in the normal life of the country and they had no stable mechanism for succession of leaders, so they reverted to civilan rule when the dictaorship ended.
..

I think you're confusing military authoritarianism with fascism. In neither the case of Mussolini's Italy nor Hitler's Germany where there any military juntas involved. Both initially took power as a result of being elected, and their removal from power required a global war, so the question of what mechanism they might have adopted for succession is really neither here nor there.

FTBFun

Communist countries to tend to control the military, however, using economic means instead - for example, allowing them monopolies on certain industries such as in China.

zagubov

FTBFun wrote: »

Communist countries to tend to control the military, however, using economic means instead - for example, allowing them monopolies on certain industries such as in China.

Communist governments gave their armed forces blank cheque books, no matter how much the rest of society had to tighten their belts (which is pretty much what led to their downfall).
The militaries also ran the airlines as a branch of the military (but democracies also did, as I think Israel did with Elal).

On the other hand, their security services had no mechanism for hiring/firing /promoting /demoting- this was always handled externally by the ruling party so they could keep firmcontrol IIRC.

I am including military authoritarian governments with fascism. They more closely resemble Franco's government in Spain than anything else.

I am well aware that there have occasionally been military juntas which could be considered left-wing as in Peru or Bolivia, but they were very much the exception.

Dexters_Indignation

Its easy to tell the differences.

Commies (funny with silly cheap outfits)

Nazi's (Not funny with cool Hugo Boss uniforms)

The better dressed the lunatic the more dangerous they are!

Dexters_Indignation

You have nothing to fear from Marxists

This is why?

Dexters_Indignation

The commies

Dexters_Indignation

How to stop Nazi's