I don't deny that there are parallels, but I disagree with the reductionism that dismisses the elements which are not parallel.
I hypothesize that the primary reason conservatives in America are drawn to that reductionism is that the fascism which we know best was Nazi Germany, and the communism we know best was the Soviet Union.
I further hypothesize that the main reason for the parallel between those two countries is that, from the beginning of both, they practiced an economic theory called "rationalization" which originated in Germany during the cartel era, and came to the fore during WWI under Walther Rathenau, who was the son of the man who founded Allgemeine-Elektrizitats-Gellellschaft (AEG) (German version of General Electric, no relationship in the beginning) and later became director of that cartel. Rationalization was a form of central planning.
Stalin admired it very much, and applied it in the Soviet Union from the beginning.
If you look at other fascist countries, e.g., Portugal, Spain, Italy, the parallels are not so strong. |
