>The Nazis and Fascists did not realize that decentralized political power could restrain a society from constantly going to war.
The Nazis and Fascists did realize that decentralized political power could restrain a society from constantly going to war, they just thought this restraint was a bad thing since they wanted unrestrained war.
In part totalitarianism arose from the logic of industrialization itself. Many of the gains of industrialization were based of economies of scale, from there it becomes natural to think of the whole country, or the whole world, as one giant assembly line.
Communism refused to accept the inequality between individuals and groups. The working class was the working class because they were genetically inferior to the capitalist class.
They could deny this because, especially in those societies that communism actually took hold, meritocracy was not implemented. Imperial Russia was a place where people didn't get their due and they knew it.
Fascism is hard to place. Part of my wonders if it couldn't have taken hold without WWI, though it did in Japan and Italy despite winning WWI (though without Germany I don't think either would have started WWII).
Mostly, I think fascism was an attempt to subvert communism by substituting national/racial struggle for class struggle. It's not clear to me that this substitution was in worse, but it wasn't an improvement.
P.S. I liked TIK for a lot of coverage on the WWII era ideologies.
Good article! Nitpick:
>The Nazis and Fascists did not realize that decentralized political power could restrain a society from constantly going to war.
The Nazis and Fascists did realize that decentralized political power could restrain a society from constantly going to war, they just thought this restraint was a bad thing since they wanted unrestrained war.
Agreed. They both saw war as inevitable and the ultimate test of manhood and nationhood.
In part totalitarianism arose from the logic of industrialization itself. Many of the gains of industrialization were based of economies of scale, from there it becomes natural to think of the whole country, or the whole world, as one giant assembly line.
Communism refused to accept the inequality between individuals and groups. The working class was the working class because they were genetically inferior to the capitalist class.
They could deny this because, especially in those societies that communism actually took hold, meritocracy was not implemented. Imperial Russia was a place where people didn't get their due and they knew it.
Fascism is hard to place. Part of my wonders if it couldn't have taken hold without WWI, though it did in Japan and Italy despite winning WWI (though without Germany I don't think either would have started WWII).
Mostly, I think fascism was an attempt to subvert communism by substituting national/racial struggle for class struggle. It's not clear to me that this substitution was in worse, but it wasn't an improvement.
P.S. I liked TIK for a lot of coverage on the WWII era ideologies.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gh7v0DU9UWA