I know what wikipedia says, I'd like to know what you erudite nerds think.
Fascism is famously hard to define, but I would say that at its core it is a way capitalism responds to certain kinds of crises (arising from contradictions in liberal democracy), that is, by altering the state to more directly repress the people. The crisis is required because fascism is a worse shell for capital than liberal democracy. Through times when the crises are less dire, it is carried and developed by the middle class, which is always in crisis under capitalism. The other aspects of fascism are a means to do this (like racism), or historical (like nordic syncretism). National socialism is a specific form of fascism that has historical roots in Nazi Germany.
Neoliberalism is just an ideology that favors deregulation, privatization and austerity. Of course, it also has some attributes of fascism, but I think the difference in these attributes is the transformation of quantity into quality.
That makes a lot of sense. Thank you. Do you have an easy reading source that looks deeper into this?
A very liberal outlook is that National Socialism is the German fascism which are inevitably described as nationalist, chauvinist, and, far right movements, and that neoliberalism is the globalization of world markets based on liberal norms and institutions such as mutual cooperation, democracy™ and the WTO. No liberal will be able to explain how they arose beyond "a bunch of well meaning people looked the other way and let the bad people commit atrocities". In the case of neoliberalism, they'll deny it's existence or assert it is good, still unable to explain how it arose beyond "all the factories went away."
Marxists (generally speaking) posited that fascism (including national socialism, the unique system of fascism that arose due to Germany's unique conditions) arose in response to the Soviet Union and the strengthening worker's movements in other European countries. As the contradictions heightened and the workers grew more militant, the forces of reaction formed a popular front (a reactionary front?) as a bulwark to stave off the worker's revolution. This front was class collaborationist, primordialist, and chauvinist on all fronts. It was reaction distilled just as Napoleon had been to the Jacobins or the third Napoleon to the Commune.
Many African and Middle Eastern Marxists stretched this a little bit and said that fascism was colonialism coming home and treating the labor aristocrats (workers) of the European world as the state treated the colonized people of the third world.
From a Marxist perspective, neoliberalism is something like: The final finacialization stage of imperialism, when industrial capital is completely exported from the imperial core to the third world because of the diminishing rate of profit on the value of labor in the imperial core. I think it is in Kapital that Marx discusses how with the advent of European capitalism, the serfs became free to sell their labor and since that had to be in a market, they had to be equal in the eyes of the law, so liberal capitalism created Free Men with free labor to sell. Well neoliberalism does much of the same in the third world with domestic, foreign, and international law. In the eyes of the law they are equal, but we know the reality of the situation.
Since industrial capital in the imperial core leaves during neoliberalism, the former labor aristocrats must begin facing the actual competitive rates for labor, and one should note that the value of labor is tied to the cost of subsistence. This means standards of living decrease and perhaps the labor aristocrat may be reduced to a true proletarian once again. This heightens the contradictions, which spurs the organization and radicalization of the laboring classes and the bourgeoisie form their reactionary fascist front once again.
I always say that fascism is the bourgeoisie' stick while neoliberalism is just a classification of the sub-capitalist economic order (or mode of production) we live in.
It is "The Strong do what they can ! and the Weak shall suffer what they must! "
with some differences beetween the what the "weak must suffer" and "what the Strong can do"
I'm a big poo brain that's read no theory but my understanding of neoliberalism is that it's like fascism minus anything that aids the working class and ruthlessly turns everything and anything into a market. Fascism and national socialism to me are largely the same, I'd imagine fascism is closer to neoliberalism as the merger of corporations and state, while national socialism is still fascism but with more token gestures to the working class, co-opting socialist policy.
Yeah that makes so much sense. So it figures that the response to all economic crisis is simply bailing everyone out with huge cash injections.
This is also my understanding. Neoliberalism, to me, also seems to have a subtler approach to propaganda and a lighter touch when it comes to imperial machinations — less direct extermination, more big incentives for foreign capitalists to expose their country to exploitation.
Use of proxies like the IMF, "fiscal responsibility", "personal liberties", atomizing rhetoric that boils everything down to individual choice, this kind of thing also is a huge differentiating factor.
Someone on here, forget who sorry, said that neoliberalism is just fascism with a friendly face and that resonated with me.
Fascism goes openly for minorites, national is let other countries die,
AFAIK Mussolini only reluctantly handed over Italian jews to the Germans. His main enemies were socialists and anarchists. While these were among the first Hitler murdered, the Nazis went after minorities on day one
