Taloniano t1_j1eefet wrote on December 23, 2022 at 6:15 PM

Reply to comment by MansfromDaVinci in Why does Hitler hate golf? by LilGoughy

I do agree that the whole right-left thing does not really fit the 21st century at all anymore. I also think socialist thinking has at its core an idea of equality, dignity, solidarity among all humans. Anything nationalist, even more so fascist, and especially Nazis have at their core the idea of one "people" being superior to the rest of mankind and derive social rights or even a historical obligation from that, to subdue, or in the case the Nazis to even exterminate other peoples.

For me that's the main difference, and from that different policies are derived.

And some random thoughts I couldn't control anymore, sorry for that 🤪 The capitalist point of view is just something different; it starts with the assumption that following egoistic objectives magically produces the best possible economic situation for all, while the state should keep itself out of almost everything. In a way, the perfect capitalist market nirvana is almost anarchy - no rules, the strongest survives, the other must blame themselves.

(Obviously, Stalin perverted the original ideas of socialism to arrive at something pretty much indistinguishable from fascism; even the reference to the Russian people being superior was used later - and in present days again, in the most appalling way. Stalin was in fact a sort of sick kind of role model for the Nazis in "techniques" of deporting masses of people in the late 1930s. That's why neither the Nazis nor any form of actually existing communism have anything to do with the spirit of Socialism.)

MansfromDaVinci t1_j1ercex wrote on December 23, 2022 at 7:44 PM

I'd say the capitalist nirvana is what they have now, weak enforcement of rules by the state, weak contribution to infrastructure, but massive handouts and bailouts of tax money collected for them by governments. In an actual pure free market, near anarchy, the communal structures would likely collapse and the capitalist institutions would go tits up soon after.

The Romans and other empires went in for deporting peoples en mass, after all the Persians and Babylonians did it to the Jews millenia before hilter or stalin.

Most of the problems with Russian communism were that it was authoritarian and dictatorial which is not an inherent part of socialist dotrine, but there was also the intrinsic problem that 'everyone's benefit' is not as strong a motivator as 'my benefit' and so there was widespread apathy and corruption.