A Comparison between Communism, Fascism and the New Deal

       During a 2016 democratic presidential debate, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders was asked to name two leaders, one American and one foreign, that he admires and would influence his policies if he wins, for the American he answered “Franklin Roosevelt.” “And kind of—that’s what I see our campaign is about right now,” Sanders added after he talked about Roosevelt’s policies. The other then presidential candidate Donald Trump called Sanders a communist multiple times. “ I never thought we would see the day in our country when a communist is the leading Democratic [candidate].We are gonna have a communist against an entrepreneur,” said Trump in front of a rally of his supporters. Trump, also, was accused of fascism when he retweeted a Mussolini’s quote that says “It is better to live one day as a lion than 100 years as a sheep.” All these three incidents show how these three terms, Fascism, Communism, Roosevelt's New Deal are still relevant in the realm of politics today. However, the overuse of these terms made them lose their original meanings. In this paper, I am going to use three points of comparison to compare the three terms: the type of economic problems they faced, how they handled these problems, and the ultimate form of economics they tried to achieve. 

        The first difference is the type of problems these ideologies came as a response to. It is true that they all come to respond to the problems of capitalism, but their understanding of these problems are different. The New Deal became in time of crisis in capitalism which is the era that is known as the Great Depression. Franklin Roosevelt first used the term “new deal” in his acceptance speech in 1932.The collapse of Wall Street in 1929 is considered by many scholars as the onset of the Great Depression. President Herbert Hoover, who preceded Roosevelt, did not do much to handle the crisis. The reason behind that is that capitalism was seen as having a self-correcting mechanism that any government intervention would make the situation worse not better. Therefore, the New Deal came to oppose the laissez-faire economics which is against any type of government intervention no matter how bad the situation is, but the New Deal was not against capitalism per sa. The case of Communism and Fascism is quite different. It is true that Karl Marx used the term “crisis” during his criticism of capitalism, but he meant another meaning than the “crisis” that led to a “new deal.” “If the interval in time between the two complementary phases of the complete metamorphosis of a commodity become too great, if the split between the sale and the purchase become too pronounced, the intimate connection between them, their oneness, asserts itself by producing - a crisis,” says Karl Marx. The crisis he is talking about is a cyclical crisis that is inherent in the structure of Capitalism regardless of the time and place. Moreover, the New Deal was largely influenced by the ideas of John Maynard Keynes who although was an interventionist, it is incorrect to call him a socialist or a communist because he never advocated for the takeover of means of production by the government. Communism and Fascism, on the other hand, are opposed to the structure of capitalism itself, so it is not a reaction to temporary crisis. In fact,both fascists and communists look at economic crises as proof of the inherent flaw of capitalism. 

       The second difference is the way they dealt with the problems that led to their existence in the first place. Economics of fascism is simply to “fuse socialism with nationalism”. First, both Mussolini and Hitler came from a socialist background. While Mussolini was a member in the Italian Socialist Party, Hitler stayed a member in the National Socialist Party until his last day. In 1933, according to Mussolini himself, “three-fourths of Italian economy, industrial and agricultural, is in the hands of the state.” By 1933, Italy became second after the Soviet Union in terms of public ownership of industries. Fascists, beside using classic socialist arguments against capitalism,implemented their policies of nationalization in the context of putting the state in charge of everything and minimizing the role of the individual. However, socialism in the fascist sense is different than socialism as defined by communism. Fascist socialists opposed international socialism in which the working class over the globe unites against the bourgeois. Because race and nationality played a major role in fascist ideology in both Germany and Italy, there was not a room for such internationalism. An average Nazi, for example, though believer in socialism defined by state ownership of the means of production, would have a hard time cooperating with jews socialists to which he looks down. The other difference is the concept of class collaboration which is a milestone in the fascist thought.On the contrary to class struggle which is a central idea in the communist thought, fascists think that all classes should get behind the fascist powerful state to achieve prosperity and stability that would be in favour of all classes. Thus, class hierarchy can be positive, therefore fascism “affirms the irremediable, fruitful and beneficent inequality of men,” according to Mussolini. Nevertheless, there were many similarities among the three in the way they handled the problems they faced, their stance on foreign trade, which was more or less similar, can be an example. Fascist economics pursued a policy of economic self-sufficiency, this was clear in Italy more than Nazi Germany. The German Nazis, after they realized that full self-sufficiency was virtually impossible due to the lack of raw materials,adapted a policy of limited foreign trade with specific countries that were under the German influence. The Communist Soviet Union was quite similar in that manner, as late as 1985 the imports and the exports were equal to only 4% of the GNP each. The FDR’s New Deal chose the same path but for different reasons and with less degree. Both fascists and communists seeked for self-sufficiency because they expected economic sanctions and trade war due to their hostile foreign policies. FDR, on the other hand, did not have choice but to focus on the domestic depression that was trying to deal with. Roosevelt famously stated that “the sound internal economic system of a nation is a greater factor in its well being than the price of its currency in changing terms of the currencies of other nations” (Dallek 54). However,that was not an ideological concrete position, because in 1934, FDR signed the Reciprocal Tariff Act which allowed him to negotiate with foreign countries for reducing their tariffs in return for reducing the tariffs on their commodities in the United States.

        Another comparison that can be made is the way they thought of the ultimate system of economics, their stance towards the concept of the state intervention for example. First, there has to be a distinction between Communist ideology and the Communist Soviet Union and other communist countries. The difference is simply that, according to the communist literature, when Communism is achieved state would be nonexistent. Thus, when the “Communist Soviet Union” is mentioned, what that really means is that the officials of the Soviet Union were adherents of Communism,but the achieving of Communism as stateless system in the Soviet Union was far from the truth. In 1961, during the 22nd congress of the Communist Party, Nikita Khrushchev, Stalin's successor, promised to achieve Communism in 20 years. Therefore, Communism, the ideology, is pursuing a stateless society in which classes had disappeared. This is very different from what fascists’ concept of the state is. In fascism, the state is the highest entity to which all other entities in the society including businesses subordinate. It is true that both Communists and Fascists were using central planning model for their economies, but they had different reasons for that. While communists were looking at state control of the economy as an intermediate stage before achieving stateless communism,fascists were looking at state’s intervention as necessary for the fabric of society. The New Deal, on the other hand, had different position than both fascism and communism. First, the extent of state intervention in the economy in the New Deal was far less than that of communism or fascism. Second, it was limited by the time of crisis, namely Great Depression. Once the economy became healthy again, these massive interventionist policies seized to exist. To sum up, among many, three comparisons can be made among fascism, communism, and Roosevelt's New Deal- the historical context in which they surfaced during, their proposed solutions for the problems they faced, and their vision of the ultimate form of economics. These distinctions are very important to modern politics in which these terms are thrown right and left. Unfortunately,these terms became insult words in the English-speaking world, and the current debates became about the meaning of these terms instead of debating their ideas and their successes or failures. A real understanding of the 20th century debates and the extent to which the policies failed or succeeded is vital to any serious debate in the 21st century.

Works Cited 

Dallek, Robert. Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 1932-1945. Oxford University Press. 1995.