You're clutching at straws here 333.
Oh really KC? What do you call Govt ownership and doctating to business what it should and can make?
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Economic policies of Fascism
Fascists promoted their ideology as a "Third Position" between capitalism and communism.[128] Italian Fascism involved corporatism, a political system in which the economy is collectively managed by employers, workers and state officials by formal mechanisms at national level.[129] Fascists advocated a new national class-based economic system, variously termed "national corporatism", "national socialism" or "national syndicalism".[27] The common aim of all fascist movements was elimination of the autonomy or, in some cases, the existence of large-scale capitalism.[130]
Fascist governments exercised control over private property but did not nationalise it.[131] They pursued economic policies to strengthen state power and spread ideology, such as consolidating trade unions to be state or party-controlled.[132] Attempts were made by both Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany to establish "autarky" (self-sufficiency) through significant economic planning, but neither achieved economic self-sufficiency.[133]
[edit] National corporatism, national socialism and national syndicalism
Fascists supported the unifying of proletarian workers to their cause along corporatistic, socialistic, or syndicalistic lines, promoting the creation of a strong proletarian nation, but not a proletarian class.[134] Fascists were not hostile to the petite bourgeoisie or to small businesses, and promised these groups protection alongside the proletariat from the upper-class bourgeoisie, big business, and Marxism. The promotion of these groups is the source of the term 'extremism of the centre' to describe fascism.[135]
Fascism blamed capitalist liberal democracies for creating class conflict and communists for exploiting it.[14]
In Italy, the Fascist period presided over the creation of the largest number of state-owned enterprises in Western Europe such as the nationalisation of petroleum companies into a single state enterprise called the Italian General Agency for Petroleum (Azienda Generale Italiani Petroli, AGIP).[136] Fascists made populist appeals to the middle class (especially the lower middle class) by promising to protect small business and small property owners from communism, and by promising an economy based on competition and profit while pledging to oppose big business.[135]In 1933, Benito Mussolini declared Italian Fascism's opposition to "decadent capitalism" that he claimed prevailed in the world at the time, but did not denounce capitalism entirely. Mussolini claimed that capitalism had degenerated in three stages, starting with dynamic or heroic capitalism (1830–1870) followed by static capitalism (1870–1914) and then reaching its final form of decadent capitalism, also known as supercapitalism beginning in 1914.[49] Mussolini argued that Italian Fascism was in favour of dynamic and heroic capitalism for its contribution to industrialism and technical developments but claimed that it did not favour supercapitalism, which he claimed was incompatible with Italy's agricultural sector.[49]
Thus Mussolini claimed that Italy under Fascist rule was not capitalist in the modern use of the term, which referred to supercapitalism.[49] Mussolini denounced supercapitalism for causing the "standardization of humankind" and for causing excessive consumption.[137] Mussolini claimed that at the stage of supercapitalism "[it] is then that a capitalist enterprise, when difficulties arise, throws itself like a dead weight into the state's arms. It is then that state intervention begins and becomes more necessary. It is then that those who once ignored the state now seek it out anxiously."[138] He saw Fascism as the next logical step to solve the problems of supercapitalism and claimed that this step could be seen either as a form of capitalism which involved state intervention, saying "our path would lead inexorably into state capitalism, which is nothing more nor less than state socialism turned on its head. In either event, the result is the bureaucratization of the economic activities of the nation."[53]
Some fascists were indifferent or hostile to corporatism. The Nazis initially attempted to form a corporatist economic system like that in Fascist Italy, creating the National Socialist Institute for Corporatism in May 1933, which included many major economists who argued that corporatism was consistent with National Socialism.[139][140]. In Mein Kampf, Hitler spoke enthusiastically about the "National Socialist corporative idea" as one which would eventually "take the place of ruinous class warfare"[141] However, the Nazis later viewed corporatism as detrimental to Germany and that it institutionalized and legitimized social differences within the German nation. Instead, the Nazis promoted economic organisation that emphasized the biological unity of the German national community.[142]
Hitler continued to refer to corporatism in propaganda, but it was not put into place, even though a number of Nazi officials such as Walther Darré, Gottfried Feder, Alfred Rosenburg, and Gregor Strasser were in favour of a neo-medievalist form of corporatism, as corporations had been influential in German people's history in the medieval era.[143]
Spanish Falangist leader José Antonio Primo de Rivera did not believe that corporatism was effective and denounced it as a propaganda ploy, saying "this stuff about the corporative state is another piece of windbaggery".[144]
[edit] Economic planning
Fascists opposed laissez-faire economic policies dominant in the era prior to the Great Depression.[145] After the Great Depression began, many people from across the political spectrum blamed laissez-faire capitalism for the Great Depression, and fascists promoted their ideology as a "third way" between capitalism and communism.[146]
Fascists declared their opposition to finance capitalism, interest charging, and profiteering.[147] Nazis and other anti-Semitic fascists, considered finance capitalism a "parasitic" "Jewish conspiracy".[148] Fascist governments nationalized some key industries, managed their currencies and made some massive state investments.[citation needed] They introduced price controls, wage controls and other types of economic interventionist measures.[149]
Private property rights were supported, but were contingent upon service to the state.[150] For example, "an owner of agricultural land may be compelled to raise wheat instead of sheep and employ more labour than he would find profitable."[151] According to historian Tibor Ivan Berend, dirigisme was an inherent aspect of fascist economies.[152] The Labour Charter of 1927, promulgated by the Grand Council of Fascism, stated in article 7: "The corporative State considers private initiative, in the field of production, as the most efficient and useful instrument of the Nation", then goes on to say in article 9: "State intervention in economic production may take place only where private initiative is lacking or is insufficient, or when are at stakes the political interest of the State. This intervention may take the form of control, encouragement or direct management."[153]Fascists thought that private property should be regulated to ensure that "benefit to the community precedes benefit to the individual."[154] They also introduced price controls and other types of economic planning measures.[149]
Fascism had a Social Darwinist view of human relations.[155] They promoted the interests of successful businesses while banning trade unions and other workers' organizations.[156] Mussolini wrote approvingly of the notion that profits should not, for any purpose, be taken away from those who produce them from their own labour, saying "I do not respect — I even hate — those men that leech a tenth of the riches produced by others".[157]
[edit] Social welfare
Benito Mussolini promised a "social revolution" that would "remake" the Italian people. According to Patricia Knight, this was only achieved in part.[158] The people who primarily benefited from Italian fascist social policies were members of the middle and lower-middle classes, who filled jobs in the vastly expanding government workforce, which grew to about a million in 1930.[158] Health and welfare spending grew dramatically under Italian fascism, with welfare rising from seven percent of the budget in 1930 to 20% in 1940.[159]
A major social welfare initiative in Fascist Italy was the Opera Nazionale Dopolavoro (OND) or "National After-work Program". Created in 1925, it was the state's largest recreational organisation for adults.[160] The Dopolavoro was responsible for establishing and maintaining 11,000 sports grounds, over 6,400 libraries, 800 movie houses, 1,200 theatres, and over 2,000 orchestras.[160] Membership of the Dopolavoro was voluntary, but it had high participation because of its nonpolitical nature.[160] It is estimated that, by 1936, the OND had organised 80 percent of salaried workers[161] and, by 1939, 40 percent of the industrial workforce. The sports activities proved popular with large numbers of workers. The OND had the largest membership of any of the mass Fascist organisations in Italy.[162]
The enormous success of the Dopolavoro in Fascist Italy was the key factor in Nazi Germany creating its own version of the Dopolavoro, the Kraft durch Freude (KdF) or "Strength through Joy" program of the Nazi government's German Labour Front, which was even more successful than the Dopolavoro.[163] KdF provided government-subsidized holidays for German workers.[164] KdF was also responsible for the creation of the original Volkswagen ("People's Car"), a state-manufactured automobile that was meant to be cheap enough to allow all German citizens to be able to own one.
While fascists promoted social welfare to ameliorate economic conditions affecting their nation or race as whole, they did not support social welfare for egalitarian reasons. Fascists criticised egalitarianism as preserving the weak. They promoted instead social Darwinist views, claiming that nations and races must preserve and promote their strengths to ensure survival in a world that is in a perpetual state of national and/or racial conflict and competition.[165][166] Adolf Hitler was opposed to egalitarian and universal social welfare because, in his view, it encouraged the preservation of the degenerate and feeble.[167] While in power, the Nazis created social welfare programs to deal with the large numbers of unemployed. However, those programs were neither egalitarian nor universal, but instead residual, excluding multiple minority groups and certain other people whom they felt were incapable of helping themselves, and who would pose a threat to the future health of the German people.[168]
