Socialism in action

[7djengo7]

It is common to believe that Nazi Germany was a form of capitalism, which is what the communists and marxists have claimed because they did not want to be associated with Hitler. The basis for this was the fact that most industries in Nazi Germany appeared to be left in private hands.


But private ownership of the means of production existed in name only under the Nazis and the actual substance of ownership resided in the German government. It was the German government and not private owners that exercised all of the actual powers of ownership. The state decided what was to be produced, in what quantity, by what methods, and to whom it was to be sold, as well as what prices would be charged and the salaries that would be paid. They also decided what profit the private owners would receive.

This was de facto government ownership adhering to the basic collectivist principles of the Nazis that the common good comes before the private good and the individual exists as a means to the ends of the State. This is nothing less than full-blown socialism.

As I see it, communists and fascists are all about confiscating and/or commandeering wealth from the hands of the owners of wealth. In a word, they're all about theft. Years ago, the question occurred to me whether or not (say) a car thief who has stolen (say) a Mustang, from the Mustang's owner, has, by that theft, now become the owner--a new owner--of that Mustang. And, in answering the question, I considered that it would simply be egregiously unnatural, and just plain wrong, to think that a transfer of ownership had occurred in that event of theft. The victim, the guy whose wealth--whose Mustang--has been stolen from him, was the owner of the Mustang before it was stolen from him, and while it was being stolen from him, and he certainly did not cease being the owner of it after it was stolen from him. The victim of the theft remains the owner of the wealth stolen from him, and the thief has not come to own the wealth he stole. The thief is no more the owner of the Mustang, now, than he had been its owner prior to stealing it.

This thought precludes me, in any attempt to define communism/fascism, from saying that, under communism/fascism, the communist/fascist power owns the wealth that they have, by violence or threat, stolen, or come to control. So that no communist/fascist State is ever the owner of the wealth that it controls.

But, if I were going to attempt to define communism/fascism, I have come to think that I could not go wrong by starting with Jesus' words in John 10:10 KJV:

The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy...

In my book, that describes the very essence of communism/fascism.

 

[Gary K]

I have a quote here from an article found on Axios about Bernie Sanders' plan for the lives of US citizens under his administration. See if you think there is any liberty to be found in it.

https://www.axios.com/bernie-sander...all-8dbccd42-9b92-49cc-9278-eeaa96a5e47d.html

Sen. Bernie Sanders, with a series of new policy plans, has put into full, detailed view how he would reorder or referee almost every part of American life.
Why it matters: A new Quinnipiac Poll shows Sanders leads Trump, 53% to 39%. So yes, America might elect a socialist. Meanwhile, he's pulling the 2020 field closer to his views.

A Sanders government would take control of ...

• Your energy choices: His Green New Deal would spend $16 trillion to force you to stop using the energy mostly used today — oil, gas and nuclear. He promises cleaner power and air in return.
• Your house and car: The Sanders government would pay to weatherize homes and small businesses, and to upgrade gas-powered cars for electric ones. He would mandate the end of conventional gas car manufacturing in a decade.
• Your health insurance: He would eliminate private insurance and put you on a government plan more generous than Medicare. No more copays, deductibles or premiums, too.
• Your current student debt: He would eliminate it for everyone.
• Your kids' college: Everyone gets free tuition at public universities, community colleges, trade schools and apprenticeship programs, too.
• Your teachers: He will hire more teachers, pay them more, and fund better school supplies.
• Your job: He promises full employment.
• Your wage: He would guarantee you at least $15 per hour.
• Your rich friends: They'll be paying for much of this with a fat tax increase.
• Your own taxes: Sanders has been vague on this one. But the total cost of just the programs listed above are $20 trillion-plus at the lowest possible end over a decade, excluding Medicare for All, which experts say could at least double the total.

What the Sanders campaign says ... Josh Orton, policy director, tells Axios:

• "Bernie will continue to fight for proposals that save American families money and hold giant corporations accountable. ... [T]he cost of doing nothing is significantly more expensive for average Americans."

Go deeper: The great Democratic gamble

Take a good look at this. He will mandate what type of energy, and how much of it you can use. In other words he is to mandate everything related to energy. He's going to mandate what type your transportation choices, your homes, your complete style of living, and all of your choices of energy products. The way it looks he will mandate barbecuing out of existence because it is a fossil fuel.




He is also going to raise your taxes a lot. His plans are for at least a $4 trillion increase in federal government spending every year. That means he is going to quadruple the current deficit of about a trillion a year. You know what that will do to our currency? It will destroy it and drain all wealth out of the private sector. All of you who have worked and built up a retirement fund? Forget it. He will take it all away from you by destroying the economy. This nation will become a third world nation under his policies.

And do you know what his health care policies will do to you? You will be mercy of death panels and unaccountable bureaucrats for everything related to your health. All alternative forms of health care will be gone. All forms of food supplementation will disappear for the government and the US medical establishment does not like that industry. Your choice of doctors will disappear as will most current doctors. Any doctor who objects to the government telling how he can treat his patients will either be fined out of existence or outright jailed. The government will mandate all treatments of all diseases and if you don't like their choices? Tough. You will comply for the government will hold all power. The individual will hold none.

Bernie will mandate an "upgrade" to electric vehicles. The largest effect of that on your life will be to limit how far you can travel as electric cars have very limited travel distances. You want to go visit your relatives who live a few hundred miles away? Forget it. You won't be able to drive there in an electric car. You will be at the mercy of government controlled travel mechanisms. And they will have surveillance cameras in all forms of public transportation. In other words, the government will know when you go, where you go, how you go, and monitor you all the way there. It's George Orwell's 1984 on steroids.

If your business requires you to travel your method of travel will be mandated. If you live in the mountains your ability to travel at all will be severely restricted in cold weather for batteries do not operate in the cold the way they do in warm weather. They hold a lot less a charge. But then the government doesn't like you living outside of their control so country/mountain living will be mandated out of existence through "energy" restrictions as it takes more energy to heat your home when it is located in the mountains.

When a person starts analyzing Bernie's plans they quickly show themselves to be totalitarian in nature.

 

[Supremum]

I doubt he'll be back.

I know, right? I mean, he copied and pasted a bunch of passages from a book I've already read.

It is plain that Marxists not only agreed with Hitler but helped push the very same ideas Hitler pushed.

How exactly did they do that from the camps he threw them in?
But seriously, do you really expect me to go through everything you just posted and comment on every last writer or person Hayek mentions? Give me some time, and I can comment on parts.

How, exactly, are meaninglessly parroted slogan words such as "inclusion", "tolerance", "diversity", and others (might I add, "hate"), "the principle of motion for the major left wing movements in the country now"?

They're meaningless to you, but not to the people that use them. "Tolerance" means "bake the cake, bigot." "Inclusion" means "have sex with my fake vagina, transphobe." "Diversity" means "no you don't have freedom of association, racist." And so forth.
In a similar vein, the word "fascist" has its own meaning. It doesn't mean "someone who subscribes to the ideology of fascism." It just means "someone I don't like," or "anyone who is standing in the way of the proletariat taking back their surplus value."
Edit: such as Stalin, but more on that later.

You just assume that the leaders of the SA ordered such burnings because of a healthy disgust response to degeneracy, on their part? I can't assume, with you, that they must have been disgusted by such rubbish, nor that, if they ordered it to be burned, they could only have done so because they thought it was the right thing to do.

Stand back for a second. Suppose that some clinic in the U.S. that performs these operations, or that gives puberty blockers to kids, had the same thing done to it. What do you think their motivations were? What, other than hatred for the evil done by the clinic, could they possibly be?
The Nazis were very straightforward about their intents. They had no reason and no inclination to hide their motives if they were something else.

Would you say that ordering the SA to "protect many Jewish businesses and buildings" and Nazism go hand-in-hand? Would you say that expelling SA who were tried and convicted of vandalizing "many Jewish businesses and buildings" and fascism go hand-in-hand?

To the first question, no. They had no qualms with violence itself. Just curious, do you know why kristallnacht happened in the first place, like how it started?
For the second, actually, yes. Fascists are kinda big on the rule of law.

And, of the actual bizarre, heinous stuff that they did, would you say that it and Nazism/fascism go hand-in-hand, like how you said that family-destroying garbage and communism go hand-in-hand? And, would you like to say that the actual, heinous stuff that (as you admit) the Nazis/fascists did should not be considered family-destroying garbage?

Well, the whole killing down syndrome sufferers and others who couldn't work for being "useless mouths to feed" isn't exactly necessary to national socialism, no. Fascists didn't really do anything of that magnitude of heinous. Abolishing the family and feminism have always been central to Marxist dogma, however.

...as you admit...

Umm, don't get the impression that I'm either a national socialist or a fascist. I am not. Even with morality aside, Himmler's dumb race cult and Mussolini's autistic conception of the Organic State are just as ridiculous to me as they are to you. They just aren't Marxists. But, to answer the question, no, the things that they did that could result in that aren't central to their dogma.

 

[Supremum]

Anyways, to add on to that, there's a reason I go after this. When antifags and lefties call conservatives and such Nazis and the only reply is "nuh uh, ur the real Nazis," it breaks me a little inside. First of all, it just seems ridiculous.
Imagine that you're at a history symposium for, I don't know, the Mughal invasion of Hindu India. Or something. You lean in on a conversation, and you hear two prominent historians arguing passionately over which side is the cowboys and which side is the indians. Lol, this wasn't on purpose, but, one of them even shouts at some point, "the Indians are the Indians, IT'S IN THE NAME." It's just dumb. Anyways, same energy.
But it really just goes to show that most people just have no idea what is going on. The whole "dumbocrats are the party of the kkk" thing in regards to antifa is just dumb. Does anyone really think that the social pressures that gave rise to the kkk are the same ones that motivate antifa? I mean, have you seen antifa? They're all drugged out degenerates. The kkk at least had jobs and actual communities. Does anyone even remember why the first kkk was formed in the first place?

EDIT: Oh, and one last thing for the day. If we are doing closest approximations, and you're motivated by stopping trannies from raping kids and anarchocommunists from beating up people in the street, then guess what? You're the Nazi. You need to come to grips with that. It doesn't mean you need to start wearing plastic stahlhelms or believing in the ice giants, but you do need to engage with reality.

 

[7djengo7]

Stand back for a second. Suppose that some clinic in the U.S. that performs these operations, or that gives puberty blockers to kids, had the same thing done to it. What do you think their motivations were?

By the word, 'their' (in "their motivations"), whom do you mean? Do you mean people who are morally repulsed by, and hate, the wicked deeds of such a clinic, or, instead, do you mean amoral, God-despising people who, not repulsed, couldn't care less whether or not the clinic's practices are evil and deleterious to mankind, and do not hate such practices?

What, other than hatred for the evil done by the clinic, could they possibly be?

Suppose two thugs just robbed a bank. On the run, while laying low, one of the robbers kills the other. To ask what you just asked is like asking: "What, other than hatred for the evil done by the one robber, could possibly be the motive of his partner in crime, the other robber, in killing him?"

The Nazis were very straightforward about their intents.

Which Nazis were very straightforward about their intents? All of them? Was every Nazi very straightforward about his intents? And, very straightforward to whom?

Basically, what I'm getting from you is that you think that it is impossible for Nazis/fascists, by virtue of the fact that they are Nazis/fascists, to fail to be morally repulsed by the disgusting, heinous forms of wickedness which you have been describing, and praising them for supposedly hating.

They had no reason and no inclination to hide their motives if they were something else.

Because nobody has ever gained public trust and political power by hiding their motives, right? Or, were the Nazis, somehow, uniquely incapable of such perfidy?

Fascists are kinda big on the rule of law.

Is fascism big on the rule of law? Are fascists qua fascists big on the rule of law? Or, are you just saying that some, though not necessarily all, fascists happen to be big on the rule of law?

 

[George Affleck]

When a person starts analyzing Bernie's plans they quickly show themselves to be totalitarian in nature.

You are absolutely correct Sir!

 

[George Affleck]

Anyways, to add on to that, there's a reason I go after this. When antifags and lefties call conservatives and such Nazis and the only reply is "nuh uh, ur the real Nazis,"...

So you are still making unfounded accusations. Even after diligent people point out that the juvenile simplification above is not at all what is going on, you still come back with it?

Imagine that you're at a history symposium for, I don't know, the Mughal invasion of Hindu India. Or something. You lean in on a conversation, and you hear two prominent historians arguing passionately over which side is the cowboys and which side is the indians. Lol, this wasn't on purpose, but, one of them even shouts at some point, "the Indians are the Indians, IT'S IN THE NAME." It's just dumb. Anyways, same energy.

And this little imaginary setup is proving that some people don't know world history very well. Try this little gem on for size:
Addressing his own party in Munich in August 1920, Hitler pledged his faith in socialist-racialism: "If we are socialists, then we must definitely be anti-semites - and the opposite, in that case, is Materialism and Mammonism, which we seek to oppose." There was loud applause. Hitler went on: "How, as a socialist, can you not be an anti-semite?"

Did he, or did he not call himself a socialist? Amazing how facts dispel the fog of confusion isn't it? It was during the overwhelming rule of the Democrats from 1933 to 1969 (except for Eisenhower) that the belief that Nazism was on the political right was embedded in the public psyche. They could not have the public associating their socialist policies with Hitler. And the public bought it.

But it really just goes to show that most people just have no idea what is going on. The whole "dumbocrats are the party of the kkk" thing in regards to antifa is just dumb.

Factual history: The democrats are the party of the KKK. If you wish to deny the facts, you have that right. As far as "in regards to Antifa", I don't know anyone who is claiming that. Please enlighten us.

Does anyone really think that the social pressures that gave rise to the kkk are the same ones that motivate antifa? I mean, have you seen antifa? They're all drugged out degenerates. The kkk at least had jobs and actual communities. Does anyone even remember why the first kkk was formed in the first place?

Why are you making this connection? Antifa is different than the KKK. Different time, different motivations. Another one of your smokescreens?

EDIT: Oh, and one last thing for the day. If we are doing closest approximations, and you're motivated by stopping trannies from raping kids and anarchocommunists from beating up people in the street, then guess what? You're the Nazi. You need to come to grips with that. It doesn't mean you need to start wearing plastic stahlhelms or believing in the ice giants, but you do need to engage with reality.

I am motivated to stop anyone from raping kids and beating people up in the street. You're not? If not, please tell us why.

 

[Gary K]

Some of the arguments on this thread are so far out of the bounds of reality they just blow me away. Defending the Nazis on the basis of morality? You gotta be insane to make that argument. The Nazis were known mass murders and child killers. The evidence for this stuff is overwhelming. And the argument made is that these people who regularly engaged in that level of immorality somehow shrank far far away from sexual perversion? LOL. It has to be one of the dumber arguments ever made.

Homosexuality was deeply embedded in the leadership of the Nazi party. Hitler was a known homosexual. He had multiple affairs with known homosexuals that went on for years. His doctors said he was homosexual in interviews with the US army after WW2. They said he was given large shots of female hormones. Eva Braun wrote letters on her frustrations with Hitler's lack of interest in her as a sexual partner. Hitler did though have sexual attractions to young girls. One of them was a teenage cousin.

The Nazis did however persecute the very effeminate homosexuals. The real butch ones though were distributed at all levels of the Nazi party and many of them were in the SS. The SA, which played a large part Hitler coming to power, was a mainly homosexual organization. Ernst Rohm was openly homosexual and was a close friend of Hitler. He was killed because he was a perceived threat to Hitler's continued grasp of power, not because he was a homosexual.

 

[ok doser]

I am motivated to stop anyone from raping kids and beating people up in the street. You're not? If not, please tell us why.

Raping kids is bad

You shouldn't rape kids

 

[genuineoriginal]

The following is a letter from Lincoln

I am not a Know-Nothing; that is certain. How could I be? How can any one who abhors the oppression of negroes be in favor of degrading classes of white people? Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation we began by declaring that "all men are created equal." We now practically read it "all men are created equal, except negroes." When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read "all men are created equal, except negroes and foreigners and Catholics."

​

It appears that the "Know-Nothings" are in charge of our Media and our Universities.

 

[George Affleck]

Raping kids is bad

You shouldn't rape kids

I know, right?

But according to Supermom that makes you a fascist.

 

[7djengo7]

It appears that the "Know-Nothings" are in charge of our Media and our Universities.

That's pretty funny! How does it appear to you that the Know-Nothings are in charge of the universities of Georgetown, Fordham, and Notre Dame??

 

[Idolater]

...The following is a letter from Lincoln to his friend Joshua Speed who was a slave owner. That you believe the man who wrote this letter was a tyrant is incomprehensible to me.

...When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read "all men are created equal, except negroes and foreigners and Catholics." When it comes to this, I shall prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty,¹—to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy.​

And that letter was written by a man who said that if slavery wasn't wrong, then nothing is ever wrong. He shows absolutely no tendencies towards being tyrannical. I have a large collection of his writings and he shows no tendency towards that in any of them.

He was a classical liberal.¹ Just as were the founders, but he had the courage where the founders couldn't afford it, to wage the Civil War, the War of Northern Aggression. Adam Smith is not the hero of classical liberalism that Abraham Lincoln is. It's always good to liberate people whose rights are stolen.


¹ - "some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty" is some country where they make no pretense of loving classical liberalism.

 

[genuineoriginal]

That's pretty funny! How does it appear to you that the Know-Nothings are in charge of the universities of Georgetown, Fordham, and Notre Dame??

Educate yourself.
The 10 worst colleges for free speech: 2018

 

[7djengo7]

It appears that the "Know-Nothings" are in charge of our Media and our Universities.

That's pretty funny! How does it appear to you that the Know-Nothings are in charge of the universities of Georgetown, Fordham, and Notre Dame??

Educate yourself.
The 10 worst colleges for free speech: 2018

In other words, you are incapable of answering the question I asked you. But thanks--I guess--for the free, meaningless bumper sticker.

 

[jgarden]

Wrong.

Fascism is on the political left. It is a specialized socialist ideology. Historically it was invented by American slave-owning democrats, adopted by Mussolini, and perfected by Hitler.

Trump is a true republican, is on the political right, and is trying to protect the U.S. from economic ruin and restore control of government to the people who are already citizens. Nationalists are patriots and support their country's founding principles.

You have fallen into the media's trap of branding all nationalists as fascists. Big mistake.
Nelson Mandela, Ghandi, Winston Churchill, and all the anti-colonial leaders who established the U.S. and fought for independence were fervent nationalists. But none of them were fascists; and neither is Trump. Nationalism is not the defining feature of fascism.

We would all like him to have polished edges and present himself as being more "presidential". But the American people recognized him as the only one, with all his faults, who can begin to reverse the power grab in politics.

Why do the socialist democrats want to use tax dollars to pay for college and medical expenses? So they can control more and more of your life. Pass a law that says you must pay more taxes, control less of your money, and have no choice in the matter. That is a fascist principle. Governments will always waste more on bureaucracy than the private sector makes in profit, so why would you want it?

The less decision making control an individual has, the more ripe the nation is for fascism, communism, dictatorship.

1. National socialism in Nazi Germany had nothing to do with socialism - once Hitler took power he dissolved the unions and cultivated the support of the industrialists!

2 Hitler viewed the communists as Germany's greatest enemy, many of whom he placed in concentration camps to relief of the wealthy industrialists and the conservative German military!

3. Trump is the antithesis of conservatism and traditional Republican principles
- "The Donald" could hardly be considered the standard-bearer for "family values"
- Trump only recently became a supporter of proLife and the 2nd Amendment, once he realized that it was to his political
- this President doesn't support the conservative doctrine of supporting free trade and allowing the capitalist marketplace to operate free of government interference and tariffs
- "Donald J's" foreign policy promotes closer ties with Russia and North Korea, traditional archenemies of the Republicans
- Republicans supported strong military treaties with America's allies (ie NORAD), while Trump criticizes them and insults their democratically elected leaders
- Republicans favoured stationing American military forces around the world as a deterrent, Trump wants to disengage from all military entanglements and foreign wars

 

[ok doser]

Dude. :nono:

You forgot the exclamation mark at the end

bad jg

 

[George Affleck]

1. National socialism in Nazi Germany had nothing to do with socialism

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6bSsaVL6gA

 

[Supremum]

By the word, 'their' (in "their motivations"), whom do you mean? Do you mean people who are morally repulsed by, and hate, the wicked deeds of such a clinic, or, instead, do you mean amoral, God-despising people who, not repulsed, couldn't care less whether or not the clinic's practices are evil and deleterious to mankind, and do not hate such practices?

I'm referring to the people who took the action. That's it. Without any other information, what is your first, naive belief about their motivations?

Suppose two thugs just robbed a bank. On the run, while laying low, one of the robbers kills the other. To ask what you just asked is like asking: "What, other than hatred for the evil done by the one robber, could possibly be the motive of his partner in crime, the other robber, in killing him?"

The thing is, I can think of other motivations for this pretty easily, greed being one. In fact, with no other information, my first instinct would be to assume it was greed. What is your first instinct in the scenario I laid out, and why is it such a difficult question to answer in relation to the SA?

Which Nazis were very straightforward about their intents? All of them? Was every Nazi very straightforward about his intents? And, very straightforward to whom?

The party leadership made no qualms about their hatred for this kind of degeneracy.

Basically, what I'm getting from you is that you think that it is impossible for Nazis/fascists, by virtue of the fact that they are Nazis/fascists, to fail to be morally repulsed by the disgusting, heinous forms of wickedness which you have been describing, and praising them for supposedly hating.

If not moral repulsion, what could have been their motivations?

Because nobody has ever gained public trust and political power by hiding their motives, right? Or, were the Nazis, somehow, uniquely incapable of such perfidy?

The Nazis weren't uniquely anything. That's my entire point. People have trouble parsing the motivations behind the growth of the party because they have this Hollywood-created caricature of Hitler burned into their brain. There was a lot more to their rise than just "inflation happened and magic mustache man brainwashed everybody."

Is fascism big on the rule of law? Are fascists qua fascists big on the rule of law? Or, are you just saying that some, though not necessarily all, fascists happen to be big on the rule of law?

In short, yes.

But according to Supermom that makes you a fascist.

No, Lenny. You're a fascist if and only if you follow the tenets of fascism. That was literally the whole point of the post you were responding to.

And this little imaginary setup is proving that some people don't know world history very well.

I definitely agree with this.

Addressing his own party in Munich in August 1920, Hitler pledged his faith in socialist-racialism: "If we are socialists, then we must definitely be anti-semites - and the opposite, in that case, is Materialism and Mammonism, which we seek to oppose." There was loud applause. Hitler went on: "How, as a socialist, can you not be an anti-semite?"

Socialism has meant many different things over time, it wasn't until the early 1900s that it started to become synonymous with Marxism. Marxism is a wholly materialistic worldview. The Nazis weren't materialists. They weren't Marxists. They were socialists-for-some-nonmarxist-value-of-socialist.

Factual history: The democrats are the party of the KKK. If you wish to deny the facts, you have that right.

Do you really believe that this is interesting? Do you really believe that contemporary democrats are motivated by the same sorts of things that motivated the KKK?

As far as "in regards to Antifa", I don't know anyone who is claiming that. Please enlighten us.

Dinesh D'Souza, for example, plays this all of the time. "Democrats are the real racists," "the democrats started the KKK," "antifa are the new KKK." As if this sheds any light on what is actually happening in the world right now.

 

[Supremum]

Here'a little info for you from people who was a leading socialists/communists in their day.

Oh goody.

Max Eastman, Lenin's old friend, who found himself compelled
to admit that "instead of being better, Stalinism is worse than
fascism, more ruthless, barbarous, unjust, immoral, anti-
democratic, unredeemed by any hope or scruple", and that it is
"better described as superfascist";

Well, pack it in, folks. An ideologically motivated communist called Stalin a "superfascist." That's good enough for me.

"Stalinism is socialism, in the sense of
being an inevitable although unforeseen political accompani-
ment of the nationalisation and collectivisation which he had
relied upon as part of his plan for erecting a classless society"

I can kind of agree with parts of this. Lenin completely wrecked Russia and it required a strongman to make at least something semi-functional out of the Soviet Union. But I doubt that Stalin was a committed Marxist when he took over. He may have been in London, but by the time of Lenin's death there were plenty more pressing issues to deal with, like getting the degenerates off the streets, getting the Lysenkoists out of the academy, and just getting rid of the Trotskyite True Believers. Not that he did any of this out of a sense of altruism, he just needed a base of power.
And before anyone else says it, I'll say it: Stalinism wasn't real communism. They tried that and millions of people starved to death, suicide was rampant, and the fertility rate in Russia dropped tremendously(I read somewhere that it was down to about 0.6.) Stalin did make something somewhat functional out of the mess, though.

The above quote comes from Friedrich Hayek's book The Road to Serfdom pp. 27,28. As you can see he documents the fact, admitted by socialists themselves, that socialism, communism, and fascism are all one and the same.

(they aren't)