USA more likely to fall to communism or facism?

The American Right has normally trended towards classical liberalism (the Taft faction of the Republicans was definitely like this), so I'd see fascism as a tough hurdle to climb. There would be little patience for that kind of disruption in state expenditure and institutional identity.

The American Left never really took towards Communism either; it had a large agrarian component who jealously guarded personal property in its infancy, and despite later bringing in elements that you might call "national liberation" types, their Maoism was never really sincere, but more just a form of kitsch. Nationalizations were never done in the US with the explicit purpose of collectivization, but rather just for crisis/wartime expediency.

The US is also a federal state, and that is important, as communism and fascism are too nationally concentrated normally to deal with that.

"When fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross." Often attributed to Sinclair Lewis, though no written record carries that quote.

Its interesting, ask people who actually self identify as fascists, and you'll get a bunch of Germanic NeoPagans who use runes and shit for their symbols.
 
Both seem extraordinarily difficult, but I'd lean to communism since fascism seems like the domain of smaller, more ethnically homogeneous nation-states trying to rectify their place in the world at the expense of others. Communism is better for huge, culturally diverse places that can't be as easily streamlined into a single nationalistic tribe.
 
Authoritarian? Yes. Oligarchic and corporatist? Probably yes. Rendered a lame duck from partisanship and polarization decades in the making? Unfortunately, yes.

In the throes of anything comparable to 20th-century fascism? Definitely not.
I always find it interesting when the word "corporatist" is thrown around. It has a variety of meanings.

Corporatism was an actual fascist form of economics practiced by Mussolini in which industrialists, raw material producers, labor, government, and other major stake holders were amalgamated into a form of state economic planning through a council, with "corporat-" referencing "corporeal" and the body, with the limbs and organs of the state having to work together as one. It was similar to Communism, but not exactly the same, as Communism took most components other than the state out of things.

Corporatism later was used to refer to postwar Western consensus economics, especially as used by Britain up until Thatcher's revolution and in the US until the early 70s, in which the powerful labor unions and biggest companies would use the power of the state to look after their interests and facilitate agreement.

However, what corporatism usually refers to, when used in conversation, has nothing to do with either of these. Usually it refers to either the existence of corporations, or the influence of government on corporations and vice versa. I'm not really sure when exactly this shift happened in terms of people using the term that way.

Irregardless, the US is most assuredly not corporatist. We never instituted incomes policies, and industrial policies were abandoned in the 70s after their failure. Subsidies still do exist, as do labor unions, particularly in the public sector, but the idea of sitting down with a few powerbrokers and doing quasi-planning exercises is simply not how the US conducts its economic business.

Rather, we have simply taken Keynsianism and bastardized it. Everyone is on board for the spending into deficit in bad times, but nobody is on board for the austerity in good times part. And we added monetarism as a way to get inflation under control, which old age has largely taken care of since the 21st century came around anyways. So American economic policy is largely an exercise in undertaxing and overspending, and we can get away with it because of the dollar being the reserve currency. At least for now, that is. If China does enough gold hoarding as some have said, and they one day simply declare that they have a shit ton of gold, and the Renmibi becomes the reserve currency after a conversion, than the US is going to have to actually do austerity, something we haven't done at the federal level since about 1990.
 
Last edited:
Good points, all in all. Goes to show how much I know of modern ideologies! :p

The most I know of actual corporatism was something my friend posited, about how an actual Corporatist America would have one of its legislate houses reserved for industries representing entire sectors of the economy. It would be like giving the MPAA a vote in Congress to represent the interests of moviemakers, or the NIH and medical practitioners, he said.

Regarding the thing about Fascism and American Christianity, what do you think about William Dudley Pelley and his Silver Legion?
 
I think fascism would be more likely, in part because an autocrat needs military backing and communists were considered the enemy for a much longer period than fascists. Add to that the military's ties to big business (military-industrial complex) whereas communism theoretically favors the proles.
 
Without the Red Scare to violently dismantle anything remotely challenging the establishment's power, you'd most likely see US trend more towards socialism. Even as far as the 1930's you had noticeable leftist events like the Black Belt communists, or a delayed New Deal that comes a bit too late for people and results in a more radicalized America. So you'd most likely see the former than the latter, probably in the form of some homegrown American socialism like the De Leonists or a more orthodox Marxist (think Japanese Communist Party-type before they went full Italian) strain. There were plenty of tense moments, but there was a trend towards the left that came about the late 19th to early 20th that was squashed by the middle and upper classes through violent and political repression.

The idea of a fascist government in America is a little farfetched unless it were something extraordinary, like a materialized Business Plot or something that'd cause a major disruption. Or as above a more radicalized America, a more successful Second Klan that goes fascistic, or worse can result in a fascist America with some trappings of Weimar Germany (government sides with the right, violently dismantling the left, outlawing non-right paramilitaries while keeping Freikorps alive) through violence and politcking. Even then it'd be a mess to deal with how to organize and pacify the massive territory of the United States and the inevitable backlash of centralization that fascism entails. You're more likely to see a plutocratic illiberal democracy like Russia today form in the United States than a fascist coup in Washington.
 
In more recent history, the 2008 Recession birthed the Tea Party, which fundamentally changed American politics, while Occupy Wall Street disappeared within a few months and failed to leave any real impact.

Avoiding going into current politics; the Tea Party only won because it was backed by the conservative establishment, it had vastly more positive coverage and backing than OWS. There's a key difference in why the former was 'successful' compared to the latter.
 
Last edited:
Top