For fuck's sake.
Socialist means that the products of labour go to society -- it has fuck all to do with anything else.
You can still be a racist, genocidal, power-crazed dictator and be a socialist running a socialist country.
You can't characterise a regime by using a quick soundbite, the politics of governments are complex and the terms used to describe them mean contradicting things depending on context as well as the leanings of the person doing the discussing -- not to mention that a particular policy could seem to be from a different doctrine to the rest.
Don't even get me started on the right-versus left bollocks.
(Me, I'm not... in any way intoxicated, Mon 20 Jun 2011, 0:58, 1 reply)

I agree with the loss of distinction beween left and right
But would suggest that is a much more recent development caused by a very large number of factors. In the early 1900s, at the birth of Facism and growth into mass movement of communism, they were in very many ways utterly in opposition.

At the very basic level the similarities which do exist can serve to mask this to an extent. Certainly both were in favour of single party states, in which all power and material would be used for and by the state, (but in different ways, I would suggest). Also true is the fact that both movements were hostile to opposition, either as idea or physical entity. Other things which seem to unite them can be found, an anti-clericalism is in both and both were, in different ways, opposed to capitalism. Nevertheless there is, or at least was in the inception of each, an extremely important difference. Communism was intended as an egalitarian method of running society, one in which the fruits of the labour of the proletariat was shared amongst everybody. (Forget how it actually worked out in the event, I have already conceded the point that both ended up as profoundlt illiberal totalitarian states.)

Fascism, on the other hand, was intrinsically hierarchically inclined. Under Hitler different cultures and races were rated according to their closeness to the "Aryan" ideal and if found wanting considered to be subhuman. Well we all know how that worked out. It was also expansionist, lauded the martial "virtues" expressed in war and believed in the decay of the current system into decadence and weakness.

Again I stress the point that both systems ended up perpetrating monstrous injustices but the fundamental basis of Nazi Fascism was essentially an atrocious anti-humanism. Certainly under Hitler it was more or less designed that way and exacerbated by the "working towards the Führer" concept of government. The roots of communist thought, on the other hand, lie in a basically idealistic view of human potential.

As an aside Socialism is the belief that the material wealth produced by society be shared equally amongst the people, which is quite different from the notion of an abstract return of the products of labour to a nebulous "society".

I don't claim it ever worked out that way in anything larger than a small hippie type commune but again it's not what happened but what was intended which defines the differences. Where both fall into error is in the idea of an either perfectible or changeable humanity, designing policies toward which people should modulate their behaviour, rather than accepting the fundamentally conservative (small c) pattern of behaviour exhibited by the majority of humanity and trying to run things with a pragmatic stance.

en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ASearch&search=working+towards+the+fuhrer&button=
(unclestinky, Mon 20 Jun 2011, 21:39, closed)

Wow, I wish I'd studied politics or history.
My point is more that, at present at least, Socialism is pretty much the oposite of Capitalism -- so in today's vernacular Hitler really was "a Socialist".
As to Left and Right -- I'd argue that the terms confuse (in its original sense) financial and humanitarian (for want of a better word) considerations. Good example of what I mean being Stalin -- who used "far Right" methods to try to create a "Left Wing" society.
I suppose the real way to characterise both Hitler and Stalin (as a canonical example) is Fascist.
(Me, I'm not... in any way intoxicated, Tue 21 Jun 2011, 17:32, closed)