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What's The Difference Between Fascism, Communism And Crony-Capitalism? Nothing
Submitted by Charles Hugh-Smith of OfTwoMinds blog,
The essence of crony-capitalism is the merger of state and corporate power--the definition of fascism.
When it comes to the real world, the difference between fascism, communism and crony-capitalism is semantic. Let's start with everyone's favorite hot-word, fascism, which Italian dictator Benito Mussolini defined as "the merger of state and corporate power." In other words, the state and corporate cartels are one system.
Real-world communism, for example as practiced in the People's Republic of China, boils down to protecting a thoroughly corrupt elite and state-owned enterprises (SOEs). The state prohibits anything that threatens the profits (and bribes) of SOEs--for example, taxi-apps that enable consumers to bypass the SOE cab companies.
What A Ban On Taxi Apps In Shanghai Says About China's Economy
The Chinese mega-city of Shanghai has been cracking down on popular taxi-booking apps, banning their use during rush hour. Until the apps came along, the taxi companies, which are government owned, set the real price for fares and collected about 33 cents each time someone called for a cab. That can add up in a city the size of Shanghai. Wang says the apps bypassed the old system and cut into company revenues.
Much has been made of China's embrace of capitalism, but — along with transportation — the government still dominates key sectors, including energy, telecommunications and banking. Wang says vested government interests won't give them up easily.
How else to describe this other than the merger of state and corporate power? Any company the state doesn't own operates at the whim of the state.
Now let's turn to the crony-capitalist model of the U.S., Japan, the European Union and various kleptocracies around the globe. For PR purposes, the economies of these nations claim to be capitalist, as in free-market capitalism.
Nothing could be further from the truth: these economies are crony-capitalist systems that protect and enrich elites, insiders and vested interests who the state shields from competition and the law.
The essence of crony-capitalism is of course the merger of state and corporate power. There are two sets of laws, one for the non-elites and one for cronies, and two kinds of capitalism: the free-market variety for small businesses that are unprotected by the state and the crony variety for corporations, cartels and state fiefdoms protected by the state.
Since crony-capitalism is set up to benefit parasitic politicos and their private-sector cartel benefactors, reform is impossible. Even the most obviously beneficial variety of reform--for example, simplifying the 4 million-word U.S. tax code--is politically impossible, regardless of who wins the electoral equivalent of a game show (i.e. Demopublicans vs. Republicrats).
The annual cost of navigating the tax code comes to about $170 billion:
Since 2001, Congress has enacted about one new change to the tax law per day. Pathetic, isn’t it? This tax code is a burden and a fiasco and deeply unpatriotic. As Olson’s Taxpayer Advocate Service notes, this code helps tax evaders; hurts ordinary, honest taxpayers; and corrodes trust in our system.
Here's why the tax code will never be simplified: tax breaks are what the parasitic politicos auction off to their crony-capitalist benefactors. Simplify the tax code and you take away the the intrinsically corrupt politicos' primary source of revenue: accepting enormous bribes in exchange for tax breaks for the super-wealthy.
You would also eliminate the livelihood of an entire industry that feeds off the complexities of the tax code. Tax attorneys don't just vote--they constitute a powerful lobby for the Status Quo, even if that Status Quo is rigged, unjust, wasteful, absurd, etc.
It's not that hard to design a simple and fair tax code. Setting aside the thousands of quibbles that benefit one industry or another, it's clear that a consumption-based tax is easier to collect and it promotes production rather than consumption: two good things.
As for a consumption tax being regressive, i.e. punishing low-income households, the solution is very straightforward: exempt real-food groceries (but not snacks, packaged or prepared foods such as fast-food), rent, utilities and local public transportation--the major expenses of low-income households.
1. A 10% consumption tax on everything else would raise about $1.1 trillion, or almost 2/3 of total income tax revenues, not counting payroll taxes (15.3% of all payroll/earned income up to around $113,000 annually, paid half-half by employees and employers), which generate about one-third of all Federal tax revenues and fund the majority of Social Security and a chunk of Medicare.
As for the claim that a 10% consumption tax would kill business--the typical sales tax in California is 9+%, and that hasn't wiped out consumption.
2. The balance could be raised by a progressive tax on unearned income, collected at the source. Most of the income of the super-wealthy is unearned, i.e. dividends, investment income, interest, capital gains, stock options, etc. As a result, a tax on unearned income (above, say, $10,000 annually to enable non-wealthy households to accrue some tax-free investment income) will be a tax on the super-wealthy who collect the vast majority of dividends, interest, capital gains and investment income.
A rough estimate would be 20% of all unearned income.
This would "tax the rich" while leaving all earned income untaxed, other than the payroll tax, which is based on the idea that everyone should pay into a system that secures the income of all workers. This would incentivize productive labor and de-incentivize speculation, rentier skimming, etc.
The corporate tax would be eliminated for several reasons:
1. It is heavily gamed, rewarding the scammers and punishing the honest
2. All income from enterprises is eventually distributed to individuals, who would pay the tax on all unearned investment income.
But such common-sense reform is politically impossible. That's why the answer to the question, what's the the difference between fascism, communism and crony-capitalism is nothing.
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If you believe capitalism is "free markets" and that is natural order, you are the ultimate idiot. Don't search for another one elsewhere, look in the mirror.
Fine, the fact that capitalism would have rational actors compete against their will entails that it will never reach its full proposed potential... as any rational actor will not slit his own throat.
After carefully carefully reviewing your call for unilateral central planification , i can only conclude that you think past performances are not indicative of future results . What makes you think communism is a better option ? how much are you willing to lose for that belief ?
If past performaces are indicative of future results, then no system on earth has failed as miserably as capitalism itself. I have never proposed or defended Soviet style socialism, since that by definition is not even socialism. I have suggested that a system that relies on a participatory planning (a libertarian socialism) scheme is much better than either capitalism or opressive socialism. This has been criticised as an oxymoron many times, but those who claim that are not aware that a non-crony capitalism is the biggest oxymoron ever. What is funny is that when someone claims that Soviet experience was not socialism, he gets junked a million times, but on the other hand, those who junk me can facelessly claim that this is not capitalism. That is childish to say the least.
It does not matter what I am ready to lose for that, billions in the world cannot get any worse than they are under current capitalism, they have nothing else to lose.
Capitalism, whether large or small, is the only system that doesn't terminally collapse in on itself because it doesn't rely on the flawed decision-making of corruptible and fallible central planners. Capitalism is self-organizing and organic; it grows from the bottom up, it's not planned from on top down, and it can wash out its failures.
I don't know about your claims that it's a total failure and billions of people are oppressed because of it; most of the empirical evidence is exactly the opposite. It's obviously done well in the West for hundreds of years in its various versions and iterations - and that's just one example.
BTW "participatory planning"/"libertarian socialism" = capitalism, i.e. people voluntarily participate in planning and executing an economic activity.
Capitalism necessarily terminally collapses on itself due to the fact that rational actors refuse to have their profits normalized, and thus consolidate power and attempt to utilize that power to further entrench themselves (which entails, among other things, ensuring the "neutral" regulator is quickly corrupted). Further, you get into the same situation as socialism in that there is no marginal incentive to produce for the plebs when power becomes too consolidated. Make no mistake about it, there is no governor on a capitalist system... You might describe the difference beween capitalism and socialism as capitalism is a victim of its own success and socialism a victim of its terrible genetics. The end is the same.
A few things: I have not proposed central planning or central planners, that is why I used the word "participatory" libertarian planning, where each actor who is affected by a decision takes part in taking that decision. That of course requires a fully educated society that can grasp where those decisions lead to. No central planner required, no bureaucracts needed, none of that.
Yes, capitalism has raised the living standars of the West, but at the expense of billions in the East. On the other hand, it has created a massive inequality, simply because it became crony capitalism due to its nature.
I am sorry but participatory planning is not capitalism. What we live in now is capitalism, it has become exactly what socialists predicted it would turn into. Mass corruption, a state captured by financial parasites, a consumerist society, destruction of the middle class etc.
Capitalism requires transparency. Democracy requires tranparency. Justice requires transparency. Transparency equals honesty. As government institutions slide into darkness, state control increases and power of state increases. Power attracts corruption and money. There is capitalistic driven freedom or NOT.
The difference between the French Revolution and what's coming down the pike is also quite semantic. Reign of Terror optional.
"What's The Difference Between Fascism, Communism And Crony-Capitalism? Nothing"
Almost exactly right. I'd say that "crony capitalism" is a feature of Fascism and Communism or Socialism, not a political ideology in itself.
As I've been saying for years in the face of countless Lefties and other assorted socialists who argue vociferously that Fascism and Crony Capitalism are ugly faces of the "Far Right". "It's what happens when capitalism goes out of control" is one of their favourite assertions. Their wrong labelling is deliberate and emanates from socialists who want to distance themselves from some of the most evil incarnations of their own comrades and brethren. When socialists fail to impose their fake model of utopia onto society by lies, false promises, persuasion or soft coercion, they eventually adopt one of these evil constructs and impose it by force, often softly softly to begin with, then by the jackboot. This is what we now see happening across the Western world. It never ends well.
-1
"feature of Fascism and Communism or Socialism"
Communism has NO corporations.
Socialism has COLLECTIVE ownership of the means of production.
Fascism has CORPORATIONS and NO collective ownership by the people / workers.
These can't ever be made the same. It takes an act of mental break-down or mental deficiency to conclude such nonsense.
"Communism has NO corporations."
Wrong. They exist but they're all owned by the State for the benefit of the State.
"Socialism has COLLECTIVE ownership of the means of production."
Sort-of wrong because what you describe is generally attributed to Communism.
Keep trying :-)
not trying: I was right the first time. Your "correction" is false.
You must have learned the Murrikin definition of words, opposite to how the rest of the planet operates.
Socialism is the collective ownership of production which is not used in communism. In communism no one has "ownership", the concept itself is rejected.
The American MSM shrieks endlessly about Hitler, Nazis, fascism, nationalism and similar bogeymen, but they hardly ever mention one word about the deadliest of all ideologies by far: Marxism. I wonder why.
Marx belonged to the tribe. The MSM is owned by the tribe.
The others were against the tribe in one way or another.
Progressive = communist.
I wish people would quit reiterating the word progressive and start usting communist. The commies learned their brand was badly burned in the global market of ideologies, and hence they rebranded as progressives. They're nothing but totalitarian trash.
Progressive tax really means communist tax system designed to destroy the free market capitalist system.
what free market capitalist system? there are no free markets because all have been manipulated and monopolized by sociopath oligarchs who have bought off gov oversight to serve only themselves.
The example given of real-world communism doesn't hold water. Yes China says they're communists but the behaviors described (The taxi stuff) is simply crony-capitalism.
True communism can be seen in the American Redoubt where a group of people are coming together to create an economic community. It is funny that those moving to the redoubt areas consider communism a dirty word
State communism (aka Marxism, Trotskyism, Maoism) IS a dirty word. As that is practically the only enduring communism in the U.S., communism is a synonym for state communism.
True communism, where everyone is a worker for the common good, is a great idea. Unfortunately, man, along with everything else that exists in the physical world, obeys the law of the conservation of energy. Thus someone is always looking to justify a free ride and then the whole thing falls apart or is kept together via brute force.
Socialism is where the worker pretends to work and and the government pretends to pay.
Capitalism is where the worker works and the banker keeps the pay.
Communist architecture is by far the ugliest concrete crap the world has ever laid eyes upon. A look at NK and SU "Plattenbauten" is all one needs to take to get their communist wake up call. That's how the majority of comrades was housed. Don't forget that communists all earned the same paycheque whether it be a doctor or janitor. At least in theory. Only the top brass of the apparatschick lived the high life, the rest is suffering in squalor and mental anguish.
ALL taxation is theft. Period. I don't want any part in any of it. Oh wait, they've got more guns than I do, and they are pointed my direction. On second thought, nevermind. To whom do I make out the check? :-(
"ALL extortion is theft. Period. I don't want any part in any of it. Oh wait, they've got more guns than I do, and they are pointed my direction. On second thought, nevermind. To whom do I make out the check? :-(
Make it out to,
Meyer Lansky
It's all collectivism: They "collect" what you produce for their consumption. They "collect" your children to tote guns in the protection of them. In the end they "collect" skulls.
"My guillotine will one day have quite a collection of heads."
Spelling?
rating: 1.
Conflating communism to fascism: idiocy.
Promoting taxation which supports an obviously corrupt government: double-stupid.
The article started out fine and then drifted into a sermon about knocking the tax law flat.
Mr. Smith, where will you hide when the tax forest is laid bare?
Anyone, with a little imagination, can find refuge in that forest.
In this regard, I am reminded of this dialog from "A Man for All Seasons":
"Yes, I'd cut down every law in England to do that!
Sir Thomas More:
Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned 'round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat?
This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man's laws, not God's!
And if you cut them down, and you're just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then?
Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake!
In a free market, the Corporation simply would not exist.
China outlawed (California-based) ride-sharing taxi services because companies such as Uber, Lyft and myriad of others are actively refusing to pay local taxes, local regulatory fees and are violating local laws.
Ride-sharing is a law breaking model that exists marely on fee and tax evasion.
And if AirBnB (another sharing economy flavor of the day) finally agreed to pay taxes, the ride-sharing multi-Billion dollar corporations refuse to pay-up.
That's why they were outlawed by China. It made perfect sense. You don't want Cali oligarchs coming to your local streets and controlling public transportation, This has nothing to do with innovation or cronyism - it has everything to do with not being a law-abiding corporation.
If a man does not rule himself, then someone else will rule over him. Likewise, either a man will put chains on himself or someone else will. The vast majority of Americans, anyway, are super stupid, lazy, and in deep debt to others because of it. They will not carry out most of their responsibilities, therefore they have lost the rights that those responsibilities require and have become slaves.
I don't disagree with you as far as the "result" of Americans- fat, lazy, uneducated etc. But let's not forget that they have been largely led to this position by decades of premeditated destruction of both the family unit, moral-social conscience, AND the destruction of currency and buying power through YOY inflation.
Strong self-starters and those who seek enlightenment despite propaganda and misdirection are much fewer and far between. The sad reality though is unless we have a group of like-minded individuals who can rise up to reclaim the natural rights of man we are all slaves. Even the moderately wealthy are forced to play in the casino HFT shuffle and operate in a manner of survival against their natural moral compass. That makes them slaves to a rigged system.
Unless mankind takes a stand for reclaiming liberty we will bear witness to the enslavement of all in one manner or another.
Nope it's an enormous oversimplification.
Fascism in history had political, social, religious, economic, and cultural dimensions. Ditto socialism, national socialism, communism, and capitalism.
None is purely a political, social, or economic ideology, system, or framework. Reality transcends all attempts to classify it. In order to have any use whatsoever, these labels must refer to something real, or possibly real, not to impossible totally abstract hypothetical pure forms.
"Who ... whom" is not quite the right question. Who does what to whom. Who has the money and power. Who controls the means of production, the government, and the state. What we find is that in every case, society is hierarchically organized into distinct strata, with less than 1% wielding an absolute majority of political and economic power; every strata does its best to grind the ones beneath it into dust by candid or covert means.
Classical political-economic thinking completely ignores the real determinants of history. There was no such thing as a communist feudal principality, or a socialist empire, or a fascist barbarian tribe, and for very good reason. This complex of terms only makes sense in a modern economic setting, the social, political, and economic arrangements they refer to are conditional on the existence of a high degree of economic development (read: industrialization, commerce, and credit).
The existence, in actual history, of capitalism for example is both a product and a condition of a distinct commercial class. The commercial class begins with no status or wealth or power, but it evidently supplies some previously unmet demands (usually artisanal and luxury goods for the aristocracy - the only ones with significant disposable income). As a class their wealth grows and so commensurately their status and political power grow with it. Eventually (after centuries) they have transformed society, piecemeal and in fits and starts, into a thoroughly capitalist order, which of course does not mean anarcho-capitalist, but simply that the most successful capitalists control the banks, commerce, trade, and industry, the media, government, and civil society, by capturing state power and remaking the government to their liking. This is what people call "crony-capitalist".
Only in its nuances does it differ from any of the other systems. The sine qua non of all is control of state (political) power as a means of control of both military and economic power. The rest is noise (after the transition period wherein the older order is remade into the new, which is when all the really unbelievably abominable stuff happens).
hammer, meet nail head
"This is what people call "crony-capitalist"
It's what you call crony-capitalist.
For me and many others, it is system of capitalism that lacks free markets, competition, is meddled with, directed or supported by the State. Plus a few other things. Thus, it is no surprise that what we see around us nowadays is crony-capitalism.
ANy tax on one's labor is illegal and immoral. Its out right looting....
What's hilarious is someone down voted this. I guess that person likes some of their pay being stolen before they get it?
That person is as stupid as someone who've upvote a pro-death squad comment.
What govts have there ever been that were not exploitative? Even the US, the freest country in history in its founding principles, had slavery.
Why do we need so much govt with all that taxation?
Ayn Rand thought that a proper govt, one that acted only to protect individual rights, could be supported voluntarily. I agree, because a govt like that would be worth supporting voluntarily, and people would learn to do it.
From what I'm reading, about 70% of the people here get more from the govt than they pay for. That means that most of what govt does is just wealth redistribution.
That is, exploitation.
And there is a super-majority of exploiters.
The balance could be raised by a progressive tax on unearned income, collected at the source.
So some would be taxed on consumption and some would be taxed on consumtion and income. Some or more equal than others.
Of course if the money that was taxed as income was then spent it would pay a consumption tax and essentially be taxed a second time.
Just make the consumption tax handle it all. The rich consume more they would pay more.
What's The Difference Between Fascism, Communism And Crony-Capitalism?That's easy. The Crony-Capitalists love to invade and bomb the fuck out of Communist and Fascist countries under the promise of supporting and installing "Free-Dum" and then turn around and install their own brand of Crony-Capitalism.
...after all, they hate us for our Free-Dums.
The difference is, that in crony-capitalism people pay for propaganda.
Totentänzerlied.... well written!
What’s the Difference Between Communism Capitalism?
In communism they nationalize the banks and then push them to bankruptcy then become capitalists.
In capitalism they push the bank to bankruptcy and then nationalize them then become communists. :)?
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v393/youricarma/Miscellaneous/Colligno...
"...exempt real-food groceries..."
How'bout... er... NO!
If one truly believes in market forces... the invisable hand... "exemptions" distort the natural flow. WHY would we want to do that...???
I my book any system that ends with "ism" is a cruel, evil, maniupulative, faith-based hoax on mankind. I list:
Capitalism, communism, socialism, globalism, Catholicism, environmentalism, despotism, ...
The question isn't whether the "ism" is full of shite, but is it more full of shite than the others.
Income tax is used solely to pay the interest on printed money. Not one penny goes to support the government. Reimbursements of a tax income that do not approach 100% of the gain, are still a burden on labor, which is taxed double the amount levied upon rented money.
If you want to understand the true theft of fait money by speculative means, read the history of Bernard Baruch during WWI. It is estimated that Mr. Bernard Baruch made over $200,000,000.00 during the war. He paid none of it back. By that reckoning, in today's dollars, that is a profit equivalent to 47,199,111,120.00 (Forty Seven BILLION Dollars).
Again, from a GDP perspective, the US was virtually debt-free before sending the doughboys to France. In 1916, as a share of the economy the debt accounted for just 2.7% . The surge in debt associated with World War I was financed largely by selling bonds to the US public. (By the time the US entered the war, pretty much all the other major powers were already in it up to their necks, and thus, didn't have any money to lend.)
In the aftermath of the war, Uncle Sam hit a new record high debt-to-GDP of about 33%, with more than $25 billion in debts, or about $334 billion in today's dollars. But with a combination of budget surpluses, expenditures aimed explicitly at paying off debt early, and payments from the losers of war, the US made significant progress in whittling the debt down. It fell by more than $9 billion by 1930, a reduction of more than a third.
It's also worth noting that this is the period when the US congress effectively ceded a large part of its authority over how much the country borrows. Before World War I, the Congress voted to approve the individual debt sales that were used to finance projects like the construction of the Panama canal and the the Spanish-American war. To give the Treasury more flexibility to raise money during World War I, the Congress agreed to set an overall limit to what the Treasury could borrow, but not to demand a say on each individual sale of Treasury bonds. That overall limit is the ancestor of the debt limit that was the source of so much consternation in late 2011.
In 1914 the Fed went into action and the debt limit of the US raised by over 140% via several leveraging techniques such as “Liberty Bonds”. By 1920 a dollar would buy about half the goods it was capable of purchasing in 1914.
In the 1941 via Lend-Lease we financed the Communist (then Bolshevik) Russia with a total of $50.1 billion (equivalent to $656 billion today) worth of supplies shipped, or 17% of the total war expenditures of the U.S.
No matter the name of the government, it is finance extorting labor.
The number of Communists in Roosevelt and Truman’s administrations were many and vast. It has only gotten worse.
"Democracy passes into despotism." ~Plato
We need to educate ourselves on group psychology to understand how it all works.
The hyphenation of America is Communistic by definition. Research the Frankfurt School and Critical Theory to understand the how “Critical Theory” is Social Marxism. All US education has been Frankfurt School based since 1960’s.
So, here we are!
What do you mean, "semantic"?
You mean zero, except for the words, but that's not semantic if anything it's syntactic.
Too much anti-semantics on this site.
What's the difference between capitalism and crony-capitalism? Nothing.
You think that Olympics really cost of $50billion dollars? I don't think Putin was stacking it in his dacha for a rainy day. Likely it's what's funding these insurgencies that are going to create "emergencies" in countries Putin wants to bring back in the Russian sphere - under his direct control.
The title of the article is a trick question!
The difference between fascism, communism, and crony-capitalism is "fasc", "commun", and "crony-capital".