Hitler: First of all, the philosophy of fascism is based on the ideas of nationalism and a strict system of social division. In the philosophy of fascism every person has its own role in the society as well as its own function. Overall, fascism is a political and nationalistic set of views and ideas.
Stalin: everything is quite to the contrary with communism. The first serious divergence consists in the fact that communism is rather an economic philosophy than a political one. The core economic idea of it is that all people should be equal, everything should be possessed and used commonly and benefits as well as responsibilities should be divided between all the members of the society. All in all, the principle of egalitarianism is present in all spheres of life of a person and of a society – in economics, in social sphere, in politics, etcetera.
Hitler: the core element of fascism is state. A person is nothing if regarded beyond a state. The principal goal of fascism is to make the state great through war capabilities and ever-increasing glory. A person, to the contrary, can be valued only in the context of which benefit he may bring to the state going glorious and great.
Stalin: Communists would not agree to this point of view. Namely, communism considers, to the contrary, a person as the starting point of everything. Communists are convinced that everybody should be working according to his or her capacity and to benefit according to his or her merits. All people are entitled to getting free access to all the goods.
Hitler: Well, fascism is far more about politics and not so much about economy. But when it eventually comes to economic questions the principle is always the same – working for the glorification of the country. For that purpose business and the state cooperate, though the government is principal in this duumvirate since it tells business what is needed by the state. Also, in the light of the fact that the state knows better than business what the state needs there is usually an economic plan introduced according to which the German economy usually operates.
Stalin: the last thing you spoke about is familiar to communists, since we in the USSR also have the planned economics. However, it is in the utmost manner weird that in Germany the state tells business what to do, and then business exploits people to do that. This is totally unfair! Communism knows how to deal with that – our economy is based on the egalitarian principal. Moreover, we have the dictatorship of proletariat which means that the will and the vision of proletariat is the principal factor that influences the formation of the policy of the state. The working class is, therefore, not exploited by business or by anybody else. All the property is common and everybody has access to whatever he or she wishes to notwithstanding his or her background. Now, everything I have just stipulated is absent from capitalism and the free-market principles that are in their essence exploitative. Therefore, for communists there is no bigger foe than capitalism!
Hitler: well, we also have controlled economy, but we do not oppose capitalism that radically. We rather choose to make friends with other elements of the market – business. The synergy of state and business efforts has really proven to be beneficial for the purposes of the state. Also, it is hard to imagine how you can risk to practice the rule of the proletariat. When so many people want to have a say at the steer wheel of the state, especially when these people are so passionate in the wake of the revolution, this risks to end up in chaos and anarchy. In Germany, therefore, we believe in quite a contrary means of uniting the state – a powerful leader whose charisma is so great that he can easily unite the nation and lead the country to greatness and glory. Also, when it comes to other organs of power we do not let too much democracy because that is dangerous for the robustness of the state. Rather, we give up on democratic elections for the sake of gathering a strong team of politicians, mainly through personal acquaintance which helps us to create a very potent vertical of power.
Stalin: well, lack of democracy is not something you can accuse the communism of. Apart from the fact that the proletariat has established its rule, its dictatorship, our economic system, as it has already been mentioned, is based on common property with no personal one.
Hitler: well, that is something totally foreign for fascism. In fact, as long as this adds up to the state’s greatness, why should a person be limited in his property?
Stalin: our economic system peculiarities are not limited to common property. In fact, we do our planning every five years so that after the expiration of each next period we make a reassessment of what the state needs. Therefore, we do not even get involved that much in money relations. We rather think in terms of the quantity of production we need to have at our disposal at the output. Therefore, our economic planning involves investment planning production planning and resource allocation planning. It is also vital to emphasize that the means of production are also the communal property. Also, in the absence of money relations, production is brought directly to the customer which makes the economic process even more reliable – the customer gets his needs met directly by the state! This shows how much the communism cares for its followers.
Hitler: Well, in Germany the state also controls investments and output, but that must be the only things which we happen to have in common. Not the people but the state possesses all the means of production since controlling this is one of the manifestations of how the state can be great.
Another vital element of our economic views is autarchy. In order to be able to become a great and glorious country one can rely exclusively on his own capacities and potential. That is why German economic machine is very extensive and potent – our capacities are great because we need to supply everything by ourselves. And we succeed to. Also, we do not give too much liberty to players in the German markets. We think that labor union movement will be only hazardous to the development of Germany’s economy hampering the tempo of its development, therefore we do not give any liberty to them. Apart from it, we condemn many practices existing on world markets. For instance, we do not recognize usury and do not participate in the operation of the international financial markets.
Hitler: Yes, that’s true. In order to maintain order in the society we provide a very strict division of it into specific categories each one of each has its own function. Also, in our social system we have the pure race which is Aryan. And there are groups of people who are untermensch for us and whose presence in our society we consider destructive for our state. These are Jews, gypsies, etcetera.
Stalin: this point sounds very foreign for us. Our principle is very simple: we have eliminated all the class distinctions. Everybody is alike and equal, period.
Hitler: Another means by which we support order in society is cultivating ideology. Ideology has become even more important than religion since it has literally filled into the slot of religion. But of course, we still have churches and cathedrals, denominations, etcetera. The state does not accord that much of a significance to them but they are kept as one of the symbols of grassroots unity.
Stalin: yet another point in which we act completely differently. For communism religion is something unacceptable. There is a saying that religion is the opium for the people. Therefore, religion is eliminated from the society since it considered the hampering factor on the way of achieving the light communism future by the Soviet people.
Hitler: I think, though, that one thing we definitely do share is the leadership. Although we have already briefly touched on it, things are radically different in theory and in reality here I suppose. Am I not right that both in fascism and communism nations are de-facto led by authoritarian leaders? In Germany the strong leader is the engine of progress.
Stalin: Well, you may be right with the de-facto thing but we have a leader in order to show the public the direction since the communist ideology is all brand new. The task of our leader is not to govern oppressively but to show the people how to achieve the self-governance. Anyway, I am interested in learning more about your social organization. You said everybody had his and her own role in your society?
Hitler: That is right. First of all, the society has to be healthy, this is the pretext of a strong state. That is why the Aryan race is not discrimination, it is the need to lead Germany to greatness. We consider all the ill, handicapped, those who belong to some national minorities as well as homosexuals and any political opposition as elements that have to be eliminated from the society since they not only hamper the development of the nation but also destruct it. What touches upon the remainder of people, a very vital thing to emphasize is the duties division between men and women. In fact, it is a very classical one. Women have to care about three things – Kinder, Kirche, Kueche (children, church and kitchen), all the rest is the concern of men.
Stalin: This must be hard then to keep everybody under control. The policy you have been laying down to me will hardly be liked by a significant fraction of people in the German society. How does the fascist concept deal with the possible revolts and tensions in the society?
Hitler: for that we have an entire array of mechanism and tools to use. For instance we use the secret police, other forceful organs, even such cruel ones as concentration camps. Also, intimidating actions also provide us with good results. However, these are means of reaction to revolts and suchlike things. And we have learnt to be wiser than that. The most prominent instrument we use is propaganda. We have worked really much and invested much time and effort in order to instill the right ideas in the minds of Germans. As a result, we now have a society which we do not have to punish – it is thinking itself the way we want it to. We have reached this through media usage, through rallies, through playing on feeling of Germans, especially revanchism.
Stalin: for communism this is an unacceptable way of behavior. Everything that you have enumerated deals with violation of a personality and is therefore incompatible with communists’ ways who cherish the rule of person over the country he or she lives in and not suppression, subjection and violation he is subjected to. It is namely in order to fight such oppression you are talking about that we have declared that our goal is the world proletariat revolution. We are intent to spread our ideas on the rest of the world and conquer the hearts and minds of people in other countries not by warfare but by revolution in minds.
Hitler: and fascism, to the contrary, opposes internationalism. There are several reasons for that. First of all, as it has already been mentioned between us today the central idea of fascism is nation, a robust a state whose goal is to achieve greatness and glory. Therefore, the movement cannot become international by definition, since it would imply cooperation between states. And what cooperation is possible between states when every one of them is seeking supremacy over the others? And the second reason is fighting such movements as yours – communism, that plagues a nation from below.
As one can see from everything that has been presented above in the form of a platonic dialogue communism and fascism are rather different ideologies. In fact, they are not just radically different, they are in many aspects opposing each other.
So, why are they so different? Well, first of all they stem from different spheres. Communist ideas were formed by economists. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were economists and they were people who gave birth to the idea of communism later instilled into young Vladimir Lenin who brought it to the Russian Empire and created the Soviet Union based on this idea. At the same time, fascism is profoundly political philosophy, a philosophy of a state that had been defeated and strives for revenge, a country whose inferiority complex has led to the creation of unhealthy supremacy theories etcetera.
Another divergence is the principles of the societal organization. For communism everything is simple – everybody is free from exploitation and equal. Plus everybody deserves as much as he works. Everything is simple and fair, based on egalitarianism. For Germany this is not the case. Societal policy is far more complex and cruel here, it not only divides the society into classes, it commands them and prosecutes some of them.
Finally, the last radical difference to summarize is encroachment on freedom of men. For fascism this is a needed instrument to keep the cohesion of the nation, keep it united and strong. For communism any coercion is unacceptable. Quite to the contrary – this is namely the idea of freedom from influence and exploitation that helped communists come to power IN the USSR.
A commentary of a paramount significance that has to be made is that communism is in a way a very hypocritical ideology, and this has been reflected in the above dialogue. The thing is that the postulates that constitute the core of communism differ very much from what has been implemented under the disguise of communism in reality. For instance, like it has been demonstrated in the dialogue, communism does not recognize any type of violence over people. The explanation is simple – the people is the source of power, that is why people are free and equal. IN reality, however, everything has been very much different. We know that all the dissidents in the Soviet Union, especially in the antebellum were incarcerated in concentration camps in the Far East and in the North of the country. The Soviet Union that had declared building communism as its principal goal is notorious for having killed millions of people in prisons, purges, concentration camps, famines etcetera. Also, propaganda can also be called one of the ways in which violation was made over the people of the Soviet Union, though the very ideology of communism denies any propaganda as the “opium for the people.”
Another notorious example of hypocrisy of communism is the successful economic model it proposed. Through propaganda it was stated that communism is an exclusively liberational ideology that will lead to economic prosperity of the entire people. IN reality, the economics turned out to be a total disaster. The USSR experienced three famines, several economic collapses, constant shortages and deficits, etcetera.
Why am I specifying all of this here? I am doing this in order to state that great differences communism and fascism have in theory are only one thing, although those differences are really great. Quite another thing is differences between the two ideologies as they have happened in real life. IN reality these two ideologies turned out to be not so different. They both used terror, they both used forceful expansion. IN both of these countries worked the secret police – gestapo and the Committee of the State Security – KGB (although we remember that in the ideological platform communism denies such violation on the people as supervision, intimidation and other things secret services do). The reason for bigger practice similarity is that USSR was hardly a communist state. In may have been a totalitarian socialist state but it has not succeeded to achieve communism, like no other country since or previously had. Therefore, Stalin’s representing communism in the dialogue with Hitler is also a very relative thing – Stalin was a dictator who ruled the country in the times of war, so he can hardly be considered the alter ego of communism as such.
Works Cited
“Communism vs. Fascism.” Diffen. N.d. Web. 10 May 2016.
Gentile, Giovanni. “The Philosophic Basis of Fascism.” Foreign Affairs. 1928. Web. 10 May 2016.
Macmurray, John. The Philosophy of Communism. N.d. Web. 10 May 2016.
Farshtley. “Communism and Fascism. A Comparison of Totalitarian Ideologies.” N.d. Web. 10 May 2016.
