I know 'm getting involved in this argument pretty late. However, I'd like to state the two major differences between fascism and socialism.
The first major difference is that fascist revolutions occur from the "top" down while socialist revolutions occur from the "bottom" up.
That is incorrect. While Socialist Revolutions always like to
style themselves as bottom-up, in practice since the Russian Revolution Socialism has more generally followed Lenin's
Theory of the Vanguard
...A vanguard party is a political party at the forefront of a mass action, movement, or revolution. The idea of a vanguard party has its origins in the Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. The concept is most well known for being put into practice by the Bolshevik Party in Russia...
which indeed argued for a need for top-down organization, radicalization, and mobilization of the masses.
It is worth noting in that context that the article is a bit blurry on the differences between Marx and Engels - Engels was more tempted by the "it will just all happen naturally and then there will be no states, no governments, and we shall all live together forever in a workers paradise" naive idiocy common to the upper-middle-class champagne socialist. Marx, being poorer, was a good bit more open to the idea of bloodshed.
That is industrialists and businessmen typically take part in fascist revolutions so they can force the government to be more business centric in their policies.
isn't it interesting, then, how the NASDP party platform called for large industry to see partial nationalization, forced distribution of profits among the employee, the banning of capital gains, subjugation before the interests of the German Workers, and state prejudice against large department stores in favor of the mom-and-pops.
A good example of this is the Business Plot that was alleged to be conspired against FDR here in the U.S.
:doh The
Business Plot?
really?
On the other end of the spectrum are socialist revolutions, which is done by laborers of various kinds.
for example, students.
The second difference between fascism and socialism is that fascists typically use nationalist divisions whereas socialists use class divisions.
in matters of
emphasis that is correct, but your next part:
Fascists basically say, "We may be of different economic classes, but it is our common culture and country that is most important and what we should use that bind us. By doing so, we can better defend ourselves from encroachments of other cultures and countries who would change those aspects of us."
is not necessarily correct at all. The National Socialist German Workers Party was indeed fairly concerned with class, and Hitler was indeed a class-struggle proponent, though he tended to blur between "Jewish" and "Financiers" and "Big Business".
Socialists, however, say, "Borders of culture and countries are just tools that the economic elites use to divide workers and get the labor class to fight against itself.
No,
SOME socialists say this - and
SOME socialists were
NATIONALIST and hence argued in favor of
National Socialism, the notion that you can and should have socialism within one country. That is why the Italy-Germany-Japan Alliance was called the
Anti-Comintern Pact rather than the
Anti-Socialism Pact.
