[tehjoker]

Have you considered that (a) communism != dictatorship, while there have been many capitalist dictatorships, often U.S. sponsored and (b) succeeding in big projects is a lot easier when you're rich, which surviving ww2 unscathed and exploiting the world will make you?

[bluGill]

It is a one direction relation: communism requires a dictatorship, but dictators often are not communist.

[tehjoker]

Every fascist regime is capitalist. Think about it. Fascism is capitalism in crisis.

[bluGill]

Capitalism is a straw man invented by communists to mean whatever they want to tear down.

Fascism is not capitalism - fascists don't even think in economic terms except how it helps them.

I'm a classical liberal. Something like capitalism derives from liberalism, but it is derived from freedom of the individual, and not a value in itself.

[tehjoker]

Capitalism specifically means: an economy oriented around private ownership of the means of production. There is a world of implication from that simple statement.

Fascism is what happens when workers get too "uppity" and the upper classes decide it's better to let a strong man reign in the lower class via a combination of spectacular appeals, mythology, militarism, crackdowns, and external expansion. Working conditions in Nazi germany were terrible because they destroyed labor unions. Fascism to a great extent is operationalized anti-communism.

Communists like myself also value the freedom of the individual, but we value the freedom of all individuals and want to make it real, not a thing you just say and then shit on a homeless person or abuse an employee.

[bluGill]

Freedom of the individual is not compatible with communism. You can value some freedoms but all right to property is lost - something I value. (I don't allow freedom to murder - but I still value freedom more than communism can)

fascism is not an ecconomic system, and very much can be communist - though of course none of who we think of as fascist were communists.