> blaming communism for the Great Chinese Famine in Mao’s China is unfair, when fascism is a much better explanation
Not to nitpick, but was Mao's China fascist, strictly speaking? I ask because the big 3 fascist regimes of the 20th century (Hitler's Germany, Mussolini's Italy, and Franco's Spain) were all stridently anti-communist, anti-collectivist, and anti-Marxist. You can see a lot of the other elements of many definitions of fascism in Mao's regime, but that anti-communist part is really hard to square. One definition I appreciated is that fascism is vocally and stridently anti-equality, and by that standard, Mao's regime is clearly not a fascist one, even as it just as strongly authoritarian as any self-described fascist regime.
I'm actually not prepared to say that communism or capitalism is more deadly, because I think the reality is that the people making decisions got to that place because of skill in political infighting, not superior judgement on the topic at hand.
That is, the reason planned economies do fail is not because planned economies must fail, per se. Rather economies are, of necessity, massively complicated things and its very difficult to account for every variable adequately whilst planning, to say nothing of the difficulty of conniving the appropriate carrots and sticks for every participant at every level, to convince all participants to follow the plan.
What fascism and most countries that have called themselves "communist" have in common is authoritarianism.
95% of what most Americans criticize as "the evils of communism" are, in fact, the evils of authoritarian systems; it just happens that the big authoritarian system that was in opposition to America for decades called itself communist. Much like North Korea calls itself "democratic".
And while fascism is, indeed, anti-equality, the inequality it seeks to foster is almost always between a cultural in-group and Everyone Else. Furthermore, fascism does not always seek to murder the Other; it also seeks to forcibly assimilate them.
Guess what Mao did in China: systematically eradicated massive swathes of Chinese culture—or rather, cultures, because there were many differences between what it meant to be, say, Han Chinese vs Mongolian or Tibetan. The Uyghur genocide that is ongoing today is just an extension of that—and yes, it fits quite well with fascist ideals.
Not to nitpick, but was Mao's China fascist, strictly speaking? I ask because the big 3 fascist regimes of the 20th century (Hitler's Germany, Mussolini's Italy, and Franco's Spain) were all stridently anti-communist, anti-collectivist, and anti-Marxist. You can see a lot of the other elements of many definitions of fascism in Mao's regime, but that anti-communist part is really hard to square. One definition I appreciated is that fascism is vocally and stridently anti-equality, and by that standard, Mao's regime is clearly not a fascist one, even as it just as strongly authoritarian as any self-described fascist regime.
I'm actually not prepared to say that communism or capitalism is more deadly, because I think the reality is that the people making decisions got to that place because of skill in political infighting, not superior judgement on the topic at hand.
That is, the reason planned economies do fail is not because planned economies must fail, per se. Rather economies are, of necessity, massively complicated things and its very difficult to account for every variable adequately whilst planning, to say nothing of the difficulty of conniving the appropriate carrots and sticks for every participant at every level, to convince all participants to follow the plan.