Rights and Systems: Capitalism, Socialism, and Fascism Compared

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Rights and Systems: Capitalism, Socialism, and Fascism Compared

Author: Grok 3 Deep Research



Published: 2025-04-09



Source: Original Grok Conversation



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AI Summary

This analysis concludes that Capitalism generally aligns with principles of individual liberty and limited government by protecting property rights. Conversely, Socialism tends towards centralized power, potentially weakening due process and individual freedoms. Fascism, characterized by state control over individual rights, shares more structural similarities with Socialism than with Capitalism in its prioritization of state control.



User Prompt

Research how personal freedom is affective positively or negatively in Capitalism vs Socialism. ACTIVELY IGNORE public narratives about both. Look at facts of both systems. Since there may be disagreements on what constitutes personal freedoms, use the US Constitution and Bill of Rights as your foundation. Start with a fact based definition of Capitalism and Socialism.



AI Thinking Process...

Definitions and Context

Capitalism is an economic system where private individuals or companies own and operate the means of production for profit, with markets determining prices and distribution. This system emphasizes private property, competitive markets, and voluntary exchange, which align with constitutional protections of individual liberty and property rights.



Socialism, in contrast, involves state or collective ownership of the means of production, aiming to distribute goods and wealth more equally. It often includes centralized economic planning, which can prioritize social welfare over individual profit.



Personal freedoms, as defined by the US Constitution and Bill of Rights, include freedom of speech, religion, press, assembly, petition, the right to bear arms, protection against unreasonable searches, due process, fair trials, and property rights, emphasizing individual liberty and protection from government overreach.



Impact on Personal Freedoms

Capitalism's Impact

Supports freedoms by protecting property rights (5th and 14th Amendments) and enabling economic choice, such as choosing occupations or investments, which aligns with constitutional liberty.

Separates economic and political power, acting as a check on government, similar to the Constitution's checks and balances, reducing coercion.

However, it can lead to wealth inequalities (e.g., 1% owning 45% of household assets) and corporate abuses (e.g., Enron), potentially challenging equal protection under the law if not regulated.

Socialism's Impact

Aims for equality, which could enhance social welfare, potentially aligning with the Preamble's general welfare clause, but often conflicts with constitutional protections.

Centralized forms may end private property and require state control, contradicting the 5th and 14th Amendments, and could undermine federalism by concentrating power, reducing state-level checks on liberty.

Revolutionary socialism might involve violence, lacking due process, and restrict free speech by controlling media, conflicting with the 1st Amendment.

Survey Note: Detailed Analysis of Personal Freedom in Capitalism vs. Socialism

Comparative Analysis

Aspect Capitalism Socialism

Property Rights Supports (5th, 14th Amendments), enabling private ownership and economic choice. Often conflicts, with state control contradicting constitutional protections.

Economic Freedom Promotes choice in consumption, production, investment, aligning with liberty. Centralized planning may limit choices, reducing individual economic freedom.

Political Freedom Separates economic and political power, reducing coercion, supporting 1st Amendment. Centralized power may suppress dissent, conflicting with free speech.

Federalism Aligns with decentralized power, protecting state checks on liberty (10th Amendment). Undermines federalism, concentrating power, challenging state autonomy.

Inequalities Can lead to wealth concentration, potentially challenging equal protection. Aims for equality but may require coercive measures, limiting individual rights.

User Prompt

Is there a system that's MORE compatible with the US Constitutionally protected rights?



AI Thinking Process...

Constitutional Compatibility

Overview

Capitalism appears to be the economic system most compatible with the US Constitutionally protected rights, such as freedom of speech, religion, property rights, and due process. The Constitution emphasizes limited government intervention, which aligns with Capitalism's focus on private property and market-driven activities.



User Prompt

Between Capitalism and Socialism, which aligns more with Fascism? Give a definition of Fascism (you've already given definitions of Capitalism and Socialism).



Fascism Comparison

Key Points

Fascism is an authoritarian system prioritizing state control and national unity over individual rights.

Research suggests Socialism aligns more with Fascism due to shared emphasis on centralized control and collectivism.

Capitalism, with its focus on individual liberty and markets, contrasts with Fascism’s state dominance.

Direct Answer

Definition of Fascism

Fascism is an authoritarian, nationalist political and economic system where the state exerts significant control over society and the economy, prioritizing collective unity and national strength over individual rights. It often involves a single-party government, suppression of dissent, and the direction of private enterprise toward state goals, while maintaining nominal private ownership under strict regulation.



Comparison

Between Capitalism and Socialism, Socialism aligns more closely with Fascism. Both systems emphasize centralized control and collective goals, with Socialism focusing on economic equality through state ownership and Fascism on national unity through state dominance. Capitalism, by contrast, prioritizes individual liberty and market-driven outcomes, conflicting with Fascism’s authoritarian structure.



Reasoning

Socialism’s reliance on state or collective ownership of production can parallel Fascism’s state-directed economy, as seen in historical overlaps (e.g., Nazi Germany’s economic policies blending state control with private firms). Capitalism’s decentralized, voluntary exchange resists Fascism’s top-down control, making it less compatible.



Detailed Analysis

This analysis compares Capitalism and Socialism to Fascism, focusing on their alignment with its core principles, using the US Constitution and Bill of Rights as a reference for personal freedoms where relevant. The comparison is grounded in factual definitions and historical evidence, avoiding public narratives.



Definition of Fascism

Fascism is characterized by:



Authoritarian Governance: A centralized, often single-party state led by a dictator, suppressing opposition and dissent.

Nationalism: Emphasis on national identity, often with militaristic and expansionist tendencies.

Economic Control: The state directs economic activity, subordinating private enterprise to national goals while retaining nominal private ownership, distinct from Socialism’s outright public ownership.

Suppression of Individual Rights: Curtails freedoms like speech, press, and assembly to maintain control and unity.

Sources:



[Britannica Fascism]: “Fascism is a far-right, authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement, characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, and strong regimentation of society and the economy.”

[Wikipedia Fascism]: “Fascism promotes a system where the state coordinates economic production, often retaining private property under strict government oversight, while prioritizing national strength over individual liberties.”

[Merriam-Webster Fascism]: “A political philosophy, movement, or regime that exalts nation and often race above the individual and stands for a centralized autocratic government.”

Historical examples include Nazi Germany (1933–1945) and Mussolini’s Italy (1922–1943), where the state controlled key industries, suppressed dissent, and aligned economic goals with nationalistic aims.



Recap of Capitalism and Socialism

Capitalism: Private ownership of production, with markets determining prices and distribution, emphasizing individual liberty, property rights, and voluntary exchange ([Investopedia]).



Socialism: State or collective ownership of production, aiming for equitable distribution through centralized planning or democratic control, prioritizing collective welfare over individual profit ([Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy]).



Comparison with Fascism

1. Capitalism vs. Fascism

Economic Structure:

Capitalism: Private ownership and market-driven decisions, with minimal state interference in pure forms. Individuals or firms control production for profit, aligning with constitutional property rights (5th, 14th Amendments).

Fascism: Nominal private ownership but heavy state direction. For example, in Nazi Germany, firms like Krupp and IG Farben operated under strict government mandates, subordinating profit to state goals ([Encyclopedia.com Fascism]).

Contrast: Capitalism resists centralized control, clashing with Fascism’s state dominance. Market autonomy undermines Fascism’s need for economic regimentation.

Individual Rights:

Capitalism: Supports freedoms like speech and economic choice, as economic power is separate from political power, reducing coercion (Milton Friedman, [Foundation for Economic Education]).

Fascism: Suppresses speech, press, and assembly (1st Amendment equivalents) to enforce unity, as seen in Mussolini’s censorship laws.

Contrast: Capitalism’s emphasis on individual liberty opposes Fascism’s suppression of rights.

Governance:

Capitalism: Compatible with limited government and federalism (10th Amendment), as economic decentralization checks state power.

Fascism: Requires authoritarian centralization, eliminating checks like federalism or democratic processes.

Contrast: Capitalism’s decentralized nature conflicts with Fascism’s autocracy.

Alignment: Low. Capitalism’s focus on individual freedom and markets fundamentally opposes Fascism’s authoritarian collectivism.

2. Socialism vs. Fascism

Economic Structure:

Socialism: State or collective ownership of production, often via centralized planning, aiming for equality. In practice, this can involve significant government control, as in Soviet nationalization.

Fascism: State-directed economy with private firms serving national goals, as in Nazi Germany’s “Gleichschaltung” (coordination) of industries.

Similarity: Both prioritize state or collective control over individual economic autonomy. Socialism’s public ownership and Fascism’s state direction share a rejection of free markets, though Fascism retains private titles under regulation.

Difference: Socialism seeks equality, while Fascism seeks national strength, but both can centralize economic power.

Individual Rights:

Socialism: Centralized forms (e.g., Soviet Union) have suppressed speech and dissent to enforce ideology, similar to Fascism’s tactics, though democratic socialism may preserve rights.

Fascism: Explicitly suppresses rights to maintain control, as in Italy’s Blackshirt enforcement.

Similarity: Both can limit freedoms like speech (1st Amendment) when state control is paramount, though Socialism’s intent varies (equality vs. nationalism).

Governance:

Socialism: Often centralized, especially in revolutionary forms, reducing federalism (10th Amendment) and aligning with Fascism’s autocratic tendencies.

Fascism: Fully centralized and authoritarian, rejecting democratic checks.

Similarity: Both can concentrate power, though democratic socialism diverges by retaining elections.

Alignment: Moderate to High. Socialism, particularly centralized forms, aligns more with Fascism due to shared state control and collectivism, despite differing end goals.

Historical Context

Nazi Germany: Often mischaracterized as Capitalist due to private firms, but its economy was state-directed, with the Reich Ministry of Economics controlling production quotas and labor ([Encyclopedia.com Fascism]). This mirrors Socialist centralization more than Capitalist markets.

Mussolini’s Italy: Began with Socialist roots (Mussolini was a former Socialist), evolving into Fascism with state corporatism, blending private ownership with government oversight, closer to Socialism’s control than Capitalism’s autonomy.

Counterpoint: Fascism’s nationalism and militarism diverge from Socialism’s typical focus on class equality, but their operational reliance on state power bridges them.

Comparative Table

Aspect Capitalism Socialism Fascism

Economic Control Private, market-driven State/collective ownership State-directed, nominal private

Individual Rights Supports speech, property May limit in centralized forms Suppresses speech, rights

Governance Decentralized, limited government Often centralized Authoritarian, centralized

Goal Individual profit, liberty Collective equality National unity, strength

Alignment with Fascism Low: Opposes state control Moderate/High: Shares centralization Defining system

Unexpected Detail: Economic Overlap

While Fascism retains private ownership, its control mechanisms (e.g., Nazi “Four-Year Plan”) resemble Socialist planning more than Capitalist markets. The Reichsbank’s manipulation of currency and labor allocation parallels Socialist command economies, not Capitalist voluntary exchange, highlighting a structural kinship with Socialism.



Conclusion

Socialism aligns more with Fascism due to their shared emphasis on centralized control, collectivism, and state dominance over individual autonomy, despite differing ideological aims (equality vs. nationalism). Capitalism contrasts sharply with Fascism, prioritizing individual liberty, property rights, and market freedom, which resist authoritarian regimentation. From a constitutional perspective, Socialism’s potential to limit freedoms (e.g., speech, property) mirrors Fascism’s explicit suppression, while Capitalism’s alignment with rights like the 1st and 5th Amendments sets it apart. Thus, Socialism is the closer match.



Key Citations

[Britannica Fascism]

[Wikipedia Fascism]

[Merriam-Webster Fascism]

[Encyclopedia.com Fascism]

[Investopedia Capitalism Definition]

[Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Socialism]

[Foundation for Economic Education The Political Economy of the U.S. Constitution]

[NapLajoieOnSteroids]

What Was Communism?

This is 1 of 2 posts, splitting one large passage from an even larger essay found at the link above:

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Another influential figure in building up the post-war political order in Europe, and perhaps a good representative of what Kondylis referred to as the “labour aristocracy”, was the British Labour party politician Anthony Crosland. In his 1956 book The Future of Socialism he touches upon many topics of how a modern socialist state ought to be run, of which many are still quite relevant, such as: the effect of an ageing population, the cost of state pensions, the meaning of the concept of class, rising consumption as a socialist objective, the growing irrelevance of the ownership of the means of production, the case against a proliferation of state monopolies, and so on.

He begins his book on the one hand by praising Marx as an intellectual whilst at the same time rejecting his theory of proletarian overthrow of the capitalist class as hopelessly outdated. Then he goes on to declare Britain as no longer a capitalist society:

The reality of the change is attested by the different outcome of clashes of group economic interests. These most obviously take the form of disputes over the distribution of income. The next chapter shows that a major redistribution of personal incomes has occurred, and that the gains have accrued largely to the workers, while the losses are at the expense of property-incomes - the share of net dividends, in particular, is much reduced. In addition, and indeed partly responsible for the smaller share of dividends, the taxation of profits is now much heavier than before the war despite an unceasing chorus of protests from business leaders. When private industry cannot even win its taxation battles against the government, something quite important must have changed.

Under the heading The Psychological Revolution Within Industry and the Altered Role of Profit:

But much more significant, though many socialists are reluctant to admit it, is the change in the psychology and motivation of the top management class itself. This is partly, though by no means solely, a consequence of the now well-documented change in the composition of the business-executive class. The divorce between ownership and management, and the relative growth of the joint- stock corporation with fragmented shareholding, were of course already evident before the war. But the process has been further accelerated since by the continued growth in the scale and hence the financial requirements of industry, by a level of taxation which bears relatively more heavily on the small private business than on the public company, and by the effect of higher death duties in compelling the conversion of private into public companies. Business leaders are now, in the main, paid by salary and not by profit, and owe their power to their position in the managerial structure, and not to ownership. Meanwhile, the nominal owners have largely lost even the residue of control which they retained before the war.

The economic power of the capital market and the finance houses, and hence capitalist financial control over industry (in the strict sense of the word), are thus much weaker. This change alone makes it rather absurd to speak now of a capitalist ruling- class.

The decline of capitalist control does not of course mean that the profit-motive has disappeared, or that profits are less important. It is a mistake to think that profit, in the sense of a surplus over cost, has any special or unique connection with capitalism. On the contrary, it must be the rationale of business activity in any society, whether capitalist or socialist, which is growing and dynamic. But with the divorce between ownership and management, the role of profit has undergone a subtle change, which leads to a consequential change both in the distribution of profit, and in the intensity with which maximum profits are pursued.

The contemporary business leader does not want high profits primarily as a source of high personal income or consumption; since he does not own the business, he cannot, as his capitalist predecessor often used to do, withdraw large sums from it for his own enjoyment. Nor does he seek high profits primarily in order to maximise the reward of shareholders. He seeks them - partly, of course, because in the long run his own remuneration depends on the success of the company: but mainly because his social status, power, and prestige depend directly on the level of profits. This is both the conventional test of business performance, and the source of business power. It determines both the strength and prestige of the firm, and the power and social status of its executives. Thus profit remains an essential personal and corporate incentive - but largely as a source of strength and influence, and not as an avenue to a privileged consumption- position for the capitalist. The implications for the distribution of income, as the shareholders' champions well realise and the figures of dividend payments demonstrate, are of course profound. A further result of this change is a less aggressive pursuit of maximum profit at all costs. Profits are seen partly as a source of social prestige. But in the climate of the welfare state, they are far from being the only such source. The business leader can also acquire prestige by gaining a reputation as a progressive employer, who introduces co-partnership or profit-sharing schemes: or by being known to possess a high standing in Whitehall, and to have the ear of Ministers, an obvious candidate, perhaps, for Royal Commissions and National Advisory Councils; or by enjoying an outstanding local and civic reputation, as a benefactor, a helpful friend to the City Council, a member of the Court of the civic University; or by displaying obvious patriotism, and devoting a lot of time to the British Productivity Council; or simply by being an intellectual, who broadcasts and writes in Bank Reviews, or makes speeches at the British Institute of Management or Nuffield Conferences at Oxford. Such activities are increasingly common and well-regarded.

Woke Capital before it got woke.

He rejects socialist fears that these changes might be reversed by a conservative government since they are rooted in more permanent social conditions. Then follows an almost perfect psychologization of the mindset of the Conservative politician of his, and our, time:

This is partly because some of the changes cannot be undone by any practicable means whatever, being due not to Acts of Parliament, but to fundamental changes in the social framework. Thus the transfer of power described in Chapter I could not be substantially reversed by any Government, for its causes lie much less in legislation, than in changes in social psychology, the moral consensus of opinion, technology, and the internal structure of industry.

Even if this were not the case, a wholesale counter-revolution would still be rather unlikely. It is not, for one thing, in the nature of the British Conservative Party, which for all its clamorous fringe of backwoodsmen usually entrusts its leadership to cautious, realistic Peelites. Indeed, it lacks the essential attribute of a counter-revolutionary party - a faith, a dogma, even a theory. A passionate desire to restore the past must rest on a deep attachment - moral, ideological, or theoretical to the virtues of that past. And this the British Conservative, typically pragmatic and empirical, seldom has. His attachment is to the status quo, what ever the status quo may be; and his function is less to reinstate the past than to preserve the present

Under the heading Is Britain a Capitalist Society? he defines capitalism as describing the features of the ascendant industrial society of 19th century Britain, until about the 1930’s. The definition of capitalism as simply the larger aggregations of industrial capital is rejected on the grounds that then the contemporary Soviet Union would also have to be considered a capitalist society. According to Crosland, capitalist societies were characterized, firstly, by the autonomy of economic life - a situation which has been thwarted by the now active role of the state; secondly by the prominent social role of the owner-manager, his role having now been significantly diminished due to the ascendancy of the large-scale joint-stock corporation, with its separation between salaried executives and distant shareholders. In addition to this, the ideological and moral underpinnings of capitalism, rooted in an unwavering defense of private property, no longer held sway in public life, not even amongst conservatives themselves, who would increasingly borrow moral standards and criteria from the left. He mentions the revealing fact that conservative opposition to nationalization was based less on grounds of private property rights, and more on arguments about efficiency.

Defining capitalism as the relative prevalence of “private sector” versus “public sector” ownership also doesn’t work all by itself, since the bare necessities of large scale industrial production not only “alienates” the workers from the means of production, but also alienates the owners since the higher capital requirements gives way to fragmented shareholding. It is not the nature of the ownership per se, but simply the demands of the industrial enterprise itself which causes alienation all across the board, and thus the owners are also becoming more removed from the means of production. Furthermore, in a modern “privately-owned” economy, the distribution of “surplus value” and personal incomes depends not only on property ownership per se, but on things such as the fiscal policy of the government, managerial decisions about the disposal of profits, tax policy, collective bargaining, fluctuation of relative prices which may again be manipulated by all kinds of managerial or bureaucratic decisions etc. Thus it is possible for large scale re-distributions of wealth to happen without this having to significantly reconfigure the share between the “public” and “private” in terms of ownership of the means of production. The comparison of Russia versus Scandinavia or Britain shows that it is possible for incomes to be more unevenly distributed in a “collectivist” rather than in a “privately-owned” economy.

Said in more plain terms: the separation between public and private, state and society, is becoming more and more blurred, and only “an intellectually sluggish adherence to an antiquated political vocabulary” (as Kondylis puts it) may serve to cover over the fact that property relations have been significantly re-configured compared to what may be called the liberal capitalism of the past. The relative distribution of the ownership of the means of production recedes in importance as a determinant socio-economic factor. Put differently: a determinate socio-economic factor of post-war Britain is the diminished importance of private property-ownership vis-a-vis the past. Private business may sometimes easily be subject to government planning, laws and regulations, while public state enterprises can at other times prove very difficult to control. Now of course we can add in later years the wholesale offshoring of industrial production and the rise of the service economy. The alienation of industry from socialism, I suppose.

Crosland furthemore rejects the idea that the “profit motive” must be inherently bad, since profit is only a stand-in for society’s demand and this demand is now being largely driven by the growing-in-affluence working-class as opposed to a rich capitalist elite. He ends by concluding that of all the most prominent suggestions for social change that different flavors of socialism have had in common over the years, those that haven’t already been put into practice would, in the new socio-political environment, only be counterproductive to socialist goals. He thinks that the word “socialism” itself has already lost most of its original meaning, yet he admits he can’t come up with a better name. In staking out socialism’s aims for the future then, he puts emphasis on further reducing class stratification - especially prominent in England - and working towards more social equality. Most indicative of his plans for the future of socialism is perhaps the following quote:

We need not only higher exports and old-age pensions, but more open-air cafes, brighter and gayer streets at night, later closing hours for public houses, more local repertory theatres, better and more hospitable hoteliers and restaurateurs, brighter and cleaner eating houses, more riverside cafes, more pleasure gardens on the Battersea model, more murals and pictures in public places, better designs for furniture and pottery and women’s clothes, statues in the centre of new housing estates, better-designed new street lamps and telephone kiosks and so on ad infinitum. The enemy in all this will often be in unexpected guise; it is not only dark Satanic things and people that now bar the road to the new Jerusalem, but also, if not mainly, hygienic, respectable, virtuous things and people, lacking only in grace and gaiety.

This becomes manifest when we turn to the more serious question of socially-imposed restrictions on the individual's private life and liberty. There come to mind at once the divorce laws, licensing laws, prehistoric (and flagrantly unfair) abortion laws, obsolete penalties for sexual abnormality, the illiterate censorship of books and plays, and remaining restrictions on the equal rights of women.

Crosland’s political views can be contrasted with those of his German contemporary, Wilhelm Röpke, one of the main theorists behind the “social market economy”, which would, in its practical application, end up as perhaps the closest approximation of Crosland’s political program outlined above. In the article Free Economy and Social Order (1954), Röpke speaks of a “buergerliche foundation of the market economy” which is tied to a specific concept of life and socio-moral pattern, including private property, individual responsibility and planning, thriftiness, private initiative, respect for traditions etc, all of which to him seems to be under serious threat by the steadily approaching mass society:

Once we admit this, we must be prepared to see its significance in every field and to draw the corresponding conclusions. It is indeed remarkable to see how far we all are already drawn into the habits of thinking of an essentially unbuergerliche world. That is a fact which the economists also ought to take to heart, for they are among the worst sinners.

Enchanted by the elegance of a certain type of analysis, how often we discuss the problems of aggregate savings and investments, the hydraulics of income flows, the attractions of vast schemes of economic stabilization and of social security, the beauties of advertising or installment credits, the advantages of “functional” public finance, the progress of giant enterprise and whatnot, without realizing that, in doing so, we take for granted a society which is already largely deprived of those buergerliche conditions and habits which I described.

It is shocking to think how far our minds are already moving in terms of a proletarianized, mechanized, centralized mass society. It has become almost impossible for us to reason other than, in terms of income and expenditure, of input and output, having forgotten to think in terms of property. That is, by the way, the deepest reason for my own fundamental and insurmountable distrust in Keynesian and post-Keynesian economics.

[NapLajoieOnSteroids]

What Was Communism?

This is 2 of 2 posts, splitting one large passage from an even larger essay found at the link above:

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The modern business corporation as a form of socialized property


The nature of the modern business corporation is often overlooked in discussions about capitalism vs. socialism, state vs. society, neoliberalism, privatization etc. The slightly confusing relationship between the Anglo-American corporation, board members and stockholders is quite aptly explained in the article The Anglo-American Misconception of Stockholders As ‘Owners’ and ‘Members’: Its Origins and Consequences by political scientist David Ciepley:

Of course, there are circumstances in which the stockholders’ right of election gives them enormous influence over the board, to the point where the board simply adopts the will of the dominant stockholder(s). We might call this ‘functional control’, as distinct from legal control (the kind of control that generates an enforceable legal duty of obedience on the part of the agent or employee). Nonetheless, we should not confuse the influence that produces functional control with true ownership, which produces legal control. Otherwise, we will have to speak of ‘ownership’ diffused among customers, workers, management consultants, and many others who, in addition to stockholders, influence the decisions of the board. And we would be left with no word to indicate who holds the legally enforceable rights of ownership. We’d simply have to invent a new word, and we’d be back at our starting point.

That stockholders lack legally enforceable control rights over the firm, shows the fallacy of viewing the board’s authority as delegated to it by the stockholders. Nemo dat non habet—no one can give what they do not have. Indeed, if the board held its authority on delegation from the stockholders, as agent to principal, it would be illegal for it to subdelegate operational authority to a CEO and other officers of the firm, because legal agents may not subdelegate. In other words, if the conventional view about stockholder ownership and board agency were correct, corporate capitalism would be impossible in its modern form. In reality, however, the board receives its authority from the state, via a charter, just as the board of the university or other nonprofit does, and not from any set of natural persons. The corporation is a little government with authority delegated from the state—a ‘franchise government’ (Ciepley, 2013a: 149-52).

The origins of the stockholder-as-owner concept stems from the medieval ideas of the body politic and corporate:

The notion of stockholder ownership, as we will see, traces back to the peculiar way in which early modern Englishmen, following the practice of medieval Englishmen, conceptualized the corporate entity, or ‘legal person.’ It was a ‘body politic and corporate’ (as opposed to a body natural)—a whole united out of many parts through political artifice. Just as St. Paul figured the eternal Church as a mystical union of believers—the body of Christ, with Christ as its head and the believers as its ‘members’—so did Englishmen figure their bodies politic (Kantorowicz, 1957). The state figured as a mystically united body of subjects under the king as head (the frontispiece of Hobbes’ Leviathan); the legal person of the guild figured as a mystical unity of members under the headship of the guildmaster; and the legal person of the business corporation figured as a mystical unity of stockholders under the headship of the governor and board.

The nominalism of the modern age dissolved the medieval and metaphysical idea of the “corpus politicum”, a perpetual body politic and corporate, into just the individual natural persons, now erroneously seen as just a collection of owners as in a regular partnership. Ciepley distinguishes between member corporations (“little republics”), as were typically medieval cities and guilds, from property corporations, a more economically specialized type of organization made up only from the property it legally holds. In the former, the members elect a government over themselves and can thus be said to "own" the corporation in their metaphysical, corporate capacity. The property corporation on the other hand, in a strict legal sense, has no members. An early utilizer of the latter form was the Church, who designated Church property as bishoprics, controlled by a bishop at its head. Since this corporation had no members ('persona moralis non collegialis'), it was clear that authorization came from above, from the church hierarchy, or even from God.

As for the business corporation of our times, it resembles the bishopric in its basic structure as a property corporation. It is dependent upon both the higher authority of government and private individuals and capital for its existence. Asset lock-in, entity shielding and limited liability disentangles corporate assets and liabilities from the assets and liabilities of private investors. These features are in turn dependent upon government intervention, since they override default rules of property and liability. The corporation becomes a separate contracting individual, which gives it an advantage over e.g. sole proprietorships or general partnerships in large-scale and long-term industrial undertakings. This ultimately boils down to legal fiat, i.e. trust in public institutions. As a result, the corporation has responsibilities to a range of constituents: shareholders, customers, creditors, employees, contractors, government bureaucrats, the general public etc.

It can be argued whether private companies and partnerships are truly private today in a milieu where they are subject to high taxation, government legislation and are in return dependent upon a range of government services. What is clear though, is that the modern corporation has to transgress the basic public/private dichotomies inherent to the liberal concepts of law, state and politics, which was originally built around a society still consisting mainly of small-producers, family businesses and farms. Since at least the start of the 20th century, economic life has been dominated by the corporation, and much of social life has been transformed accordingly. We don’t typically relate to each other as buyers and sellers in a marketplace, but as employees with specific roles and duties that we perform on the behalf of a large organization, or as customers of the same. The corporation in turn has a sort of autonomy in economic life. We usually refer to products by the name of the corporation that produced them, and we usually refer to ourselves as working not for individuals, but for corporations. This is again a necessary consequence of the high division of labor and use of advanced machinery and supply chains which the global economy depends on, which makes it almost impossible to even know which natural persons has done what in the production of a given commodity. This illustrates the extent to which modern industrial technology is dependent upon, if not even the direct result of, large-scale organization and highly supervised coordination and cooperation between humans. Identifying modernity and post-modernity simply with the rise of individualism (and its evil brother - capitalism) is therefore a very one-sided view.

In a different article Ciepley writes:

Marx was thus not wrong to see bourgeois (individually owned) property as a fetter on the productive powers of capital that would be burst asunder, to be replaced with socialized property (Marx and Engels [1848] 1933, 13). The Marxist mistake was to assume that the socialization of property would occur at the level of the state. Instead it has occurred at the level of the corporation. The underlying reason is the superior scale and stability of socialized property to the merely aggregated property of restless individuals in partnership.

Ours is neither a public property economy nor a private (bourgeois) property economy, but a government-fostered corporate property economy, with the means of production socialized at the level of the firm. No less than a socialist economy, but through devices more opaque, our economy is dominated by property un- owned by natural individuals.

Adam Smith, “the father of capitalism”, had this to say about corporations:

The directors of such companies... being the managers rather of other people's money... it cannot well be expected, that they should watch over it with the same anxious vigilance with which the partners in a private copartnery frequently watch over their own.... Negligence and profusion, therefore, must always prevail, more or less, in the management of the affairs of such a company. (Smith [1776] 1976, II, 264-65)

This type of economic organization necessarily had to conflict with classical liberal ideals of thrift and responsibility, which they saw as necessary ingredients to a stable and free economic order. Ciepley, and other progressives in general, believes that corporate irresponsibility can be reigned in by re-classifying them and placing them on a more sound ethical basis along the lines of corporate social responsibility, workplace democracy and so on. The great irony of it all is that modern-day market liberals typically wants to hang on to the liberal conceptual framework in a rather desperate attempt to stave off what they see as yet further state and collectivist encroachment. Yet at the same time they have largely assimilated the moral presuppositions of their left-wing counterparts, whereby the economy is legitimized on the basis of creating the largest amount of material welfare for everyone. What Kondylis describes as the economization of the political is similar to what Hannah Arendt calls "the rise of the social", that is, a general feature of modern societies whereby the needs of the private household, as traditionally construed, enters the public or political sphere. Commercial activity and economic distribution is brought to the forefront of public attention and becomes in the process also a means of exercising political control. Since our conceptions lag behind social developments the categorization of e.g. the business corporation still remains a point of difficulty. Ciepley:

The difficulty is not that corporations have become genuinely "private," but that their activities have become almost wholly commercial, which liberals do not associate with the state. Put another way, they are difficult to interpret because they have participated in—indeed, have been a principal conduit for—what Hannah Arendt calls the "rise of the social," in which the animal needs of the private household, or oikos, come to preoccupy the public sphere (Arendt 1998, 38-49). The chartering of the great trading companies in the early modern period stands at the trailhead of the social—a tapping of public power for traditionally private, money-making pursuits and a liquidation of private property for the sake of social wealth.

Thus the effort to reconcile the more socialistic business corporation with liberalism might have only exacerbated corporate irresponsibility by privileging one group of stakeholders before all the others. To the extent that it has had much of an effect at all it might at least explain why this particular ideological direction, as exemplified by Milton Friedman’s doctrine of shareholder primacy, always creates such a virulent response from the left. The rise of the business corporation underlines the inadequacy of the basic liberal, and for that matter marxist or socialist, mental schemata for interpreting contemporary social reality:

More than any other phenomenon, the rise of corporations challenges the adequacy of our liberal individualist frames and underscores the urgency of complicating them. Indeed, it can be asked whether we even still live in a liberal economy, as opposed to a new form of socialized economy—an economy of socialized property under the control of state-authorized, for-profit governments. The liberal individualist ideal retains great potency. Overlaid on the corporate economy, however, liberal individualism becomes a mere ideology that at once misdirects corporate power, conceals it, and protects it.

At any rate, choosing between stakeholder capitalism and shareholder primacy is not an enticing prospect. If one desires to go in a genuinely right-wing direction then one also has to be prepared to stand up for old-fashioned proprietorship, no matter how far removed this style of thinking may be from the mental categories of men today.

In Socialism exposed and refuted (1892), the Swiss Catholic theologian Viktor Cathrein saw the moral force emanating from authority as the essential ingredient in upholding the modern industrial order:

This modern industrial order in great manufactories and other industries is based upon the strongest moral force. The owner of the factory or industry, either in person or by means of his representative, confronts the laborers as proprietor and can rule them with almost absolute power. The laborer, it is true, is not forced to offer his service to such establishments, but if he wishes to obtain from them labor and support he must submit unconditionally to their ruling. The least insubordination will be the cause of his dismissal. Therefore force controls the modern system of production, but only moral force, to which each one submits for his own interest. In the socialistic state, on the other hand, the directors of the various industries would confront the laborers not as proprietors, but as equals, possessing the same rights. Each one has the same right as his neighbor to consider himself a proprietor; nor can any one be dismissed; but every one must get work, for the simple reason that all private production is interdicted. The practicability of large private industrial institutions, therefore, does not prove the possibility of extending the same system to entire states.

Owing to its industrial inheritance, socialism endeavors to turn the whole of society into one great productive unit or corporation, and must logically subordinate all other vocations and aspirations to this end:

Now, what is the design of socialism? Socialism will make the laboring class the ruling one, and make labor capacity (the production of value) the standard of the social organization itself and of the social position of each member of society. Society is to become one great productive union. No one may withdraw himself from the duty of production. Unproductive, useless individuals shall not be tolerated. That in such an organization, in which all members are forced to be productive, there is no room for higher callings — e.g., for the priesthood consecrated to the divine service, for religious orders, for those who devote themselves to arts and sciences for their own sake — goes without saying.

The incessant chasing of economic growth and GDP per capita increases, rationalization, the min-maxing of all possible economic inputs and outputs, profit over people - all these plagues that neoliberalism has supposedly brought upon us - is ultimately all that the socialist himself knows of and the gods that he as well must, no matter how unwillingly, submit to. Human society is conceptualized into the framework of the factory hall, with its ethos of utilitarian maximization and rational management of all available resources. The real state on the other hand, the one that actually exists and must exist, is nothing more but an independent social relation; just like a person, it has no inborn purpose, it is enough that it simply exists, in principle always in complete freedom.

[Typhoon]

What Was Communism?

Communism was not / is not a political theory nor an economic one. Rather, it is a secular religion consisting of revealed prophecy.

My view is that in science, the results of a new theory, reproducibly tested by experiment, survive independent of the scientist and his character.

On the other hand, in philosophy [and religion], the theory and the philosopher's [prophet's] character are inseparable.

Marx_Paul Johnson - Intellectuals_ From Marx and Tolstoy to Sartre and Chomsky.pdf

(352.93 KiB) Downloaded 14 times

[noddy]

the problem with all political theory is it is a bit like religion.

clever people try and come up language and rules that stops humans being humans and lo and behold, the rotters keep on acting like humans.

sometimes the culture has experienced an outcome so bad, it causes them to behave better for a generation or two.. then its forgotten and we go back to square one again.

My view is that in science, the results of a new theory, reproducibly tested by experiment, survive independent of the scientist and his character.

the timings on that actually happening are somewhat dubious, on a political timeframe.

plus, it only works on hard science, and we live in an age where everything is called science now, including things that used to be called "social studies"

[NapLajoieOnSteroids]

That's only if one is expecting to read the grammar and vocabulary as if it were a perfect language with no remainder- straight outta the toybox.


--------------


Whatever communism was and is and will be in theory is beyond Marx and Engels at this point, and that includes the capitalism that they pejoratively termed, which has long become entrenched, embraced and adopted by a number of people as representing them.

I think the essay is right in that if someone says they come in name of communism or capitalism, we can be assured that they are practicing planetary politics, which means they measure his or her own enemies on a totalizing, planetary scale.

In that sense it can most certainly resemble religions if one can only imagine religions being solely a continuation of politics by other means. Or, if we ignore an older sense of religion as being justice serviced to a god or gods whereas the political might only extend to justice among fellow men; and a lot can change depending on how and which of the previous words are emphasized.

[noddy]

Be it a church group or a democracy.

You either show up, be involved and argue your place, or you become an irrelevent other.

In my country, democracy is just words.. hardly anyone gets.actively involved.

The framework, the system, the rules, all applied by the people who do show up... and they do what they want and justify it .. however they can.

Which is why people get confused about how the words didnt save them.

Communism or oligarchy, the difference is purely theoretical.

Capitalism, is but a method for dealing with strangers, it can exist in any system

As proved by the chinese

[noddy]

The incessant chasing of economic growth and GDP per capita increases, rationalization, the min-maxing of all possible economic inputs and outputs, profit over people - all these plagues that neoliberalism has supposedly brought upon us - is ultimately all that the socialist himself knows of and the gods that he as well must, no matter how unwillingly, submit to. Human society is conceptualized into the framework of the factory hall, with its ethos of utilitarian maximization and rational management of all available resources. The real state on the other hand, the one that actually exists and must exist, is nothing more but an independent social relation; just like a person, it has no inborn purpose, it is enough that it simply exists, in principle always in complete freedom.

well, this is , and always will be, the price of multi culturism and freedom (tm).

people with cultural trust dont need capitalism - you can do things on other levels, either out of obligation, or trust of future benefit.

in our society all the different people dont have cultural trust, they interact as "others" using the token of otherness, money -- everyone is a foreigner to someone else.

min maxing is burned into our societies like a disease, only loner hermits get to relieve themselves of it.

[Doc]

For your consideration:

REMINDING THAT RED CHINA IS RECKLESS AND SADISTIC: 1/8: Red Memory: The Afterlives of China's Cultural Revolution by Tania Branigan (Author)

Red Memory uncovers forty years of silence through the stories of individuals who lived through the madness. Deftly exploring how this era defined a generation and continues to impact China today, Branigan asks: What happens to a society when you can no longer trust those closest to you? What happens to the present when the past is buried, exploited, or redrawn? And how do you live with yourself when the worst is over?
1965 PRC LIU MAO

Link to part two of eight at the link

https://audioboom.com/posts/8701011-rem ... -china-s-c

[NapLajoieOnSteroids]

The incessant chasing of economic growth and GDP per capita increases, rationalization, the min-maxing of all possible economic inputs and outputs, profit over people - all these plagues that neoliberalism has supposedly brought upon us - is ultimately all that the socialist himself knows of and the gods that he as well must, no matter how unwillingly, submit to. Human society is conceptualized into the framework of the factory hall, with its ethos of utilitarian maximization and rational management of all available resources. The real state on the other hand, the one that actually exists and must exist, is nothing more but an independent social relation; just like a person, it has no inborn purpose, it is enough that it simply exists, in principle always in complete freedom.

well, this is , and always will be, the price of multi culturism and freedom (tm).

people with cultural trust dont need capitalism - you can do things on other levels, either out of obligation, or trust of future benefit.

in our society all the different people dont have cultural trust, they interact as "others" using the token of otherness, money -- everyone is a foreigner to someone else.

min maxing is burned into our societies like a disease, only loner hermits get to relieve themselves of it.

I took the author to be saying that its a fantasy of the socialists that they are advocating for something which opposes this, when all they can do is entrench, reinforce and advance it.

[noddy]

deep down they crave the coherancy of the monocultural small village, but the absurdity of changing the modern world into that, causes em cognitive dissonance.