Mind Your -isms
You’ll read a lot these days about the various “ism” forms of government. The narrative from the right is that the left are leading us on the path toward socialism or sometimes marxism, as opposed to supporting our beloved capitalism. The narrative from the left is that the right are leading us into fascism. So for a moment, we thought we’d take a look at these various “-isms” and see what’s true and what’s not about these claims. I guess first, we should point out what these different -isms are (in order of reference above):
Socialism - is a form of government in which the people control the means of production. That’s the basics of it. Our country of over 350 million people is so mind-numbingly big, and our representatives so mind-numbingly few, that we often forget that our government is really just us. “We, the people” elect representatives who go about doing business on our behalf. So what that control means is that our government controls, and the means of production means the tools to make stuff. So basically, there is no such thing as free market. No wall street, no selling or buying capital — mostly.
Marxism - marxism is an economic theory that begins with time instead of physical things. In the idealized marxist society, there aren’t classes that separate people into different camps of haves and have-nots. There are implications of this in wage controls. Though the means of production are not required to be controlled by the state necessarily for a classless society to exist, the term is still used by Americans as a pseudonym for Socialism or Communism. This is a mistake. There are ways to achieve a marxist society without either of these, and which still relies on capitalist principles.
Capitalism - is an economic theory that prioritizes private ownership of the means of production. This allows people to own their own businesses, equipment, tools, etc. It is not a form of government, but an economic theory. And it is not the same as free-market capitalism, in which the people (i.e. the government) do not set boundaries on the marketplace at all. In history, there has rarely ever been an actual free market economy. The United States does not have a free market economy (not even close).
Communism - is an economic theory mixed with a manner of government. A good way to think about communism is to think of it as the strictest form of adherence to the belief in human equality, to the extent that there is common ownership of everything. This means there is no such thing as private possessions, etc. Whereas in marxist theory, socialism evolves gradually, communism often comes from revolutionary acts and violence, shocking the system and creating problems like The Great Leap Forward.
Fascism - is a form of government and is perhaps the most stable, yet most destructive, merging of ideas. Within fascism, there is a dictatorial leader and a small in-group who control essentially everything. One way to think of fascism is as a more extreme version of communism, where the commune is very small, and only consists of the leader and group of selected leaders. There’s also a social litmus test in the form of some ideological belief that’s often not true, but that adherents must accept to be considered for opportunities to join the leader’s group. Of the above, fascism has the most in common with communism. That said, communism wasn’t the horse that Hitler, the ultimate fascist in recent history, rode in on…
Now, the first thing to understand is that no nation is strictly any of these. The fact is that these are ideological stances, and since humans are generally practical in nature, or at least must be to form a society, trade-offs are made. Communist China embraces some free-market principles, and the United States supports some social welfare programs.
As mentioned above, there are no pure examples of any of the above. And to some extent, every nation has elements of each of these above concepts, as these really just align to how humans can be organized to pay for things. But, if you start seeing things like we saw under Trump (nepotism, cronyism, corruption which is not techicanally an -ism but fits conceptually), then your nation has little time left.
Nepotism - giving relatives jobs to shore up support and retain power. Often the relatives are unqualified for the jobs assigned. This is an old practice, and in part led to the decline of the Roman hegemony (research the Investiture Controversy).
Cronyism - giving friends jobs to shore up support and retain power. Similarly, friends are not friends because of their qualifications. One quick way to demise is to circumvent hiring based on qualifications and bring in an administration of your own friends and allies based on loyalty instead. Does this sound familiar?
Corruption - quid pro quo favors traded not on the value they provide to the state, but on the power they allow folks to retain. Also, the two above fit into this description. Consistent lying, being a bad partner, all of these are forms of corruption. Nothing brings about the destruction of a state faster than corruption.
But what does this all mean to me?
The purpose of this article is to give you the knowledge and tools to talk about these various -isms when people start spouting off about them. Because now you know what they are, and more importantly, what they aren’t. And hopefully you realize that sometimes, most times, in fact, we talk about the government and economic -isms without talking about the corruption -isms. This is a massive mistake, as it attributes to forms of government properties which aren’t inherently of those government forms.
