Nathan Newman wrote:
>And those kinds of socialists are the fascist-minded ones.
-Swedish social democrats and Fabians?
In a sense, yes- both groups were a bit unique in their period in that they thought socialists had a role under existing capitalism in promoting planning. Sassoon emphasizes this distinction that most socialists, even those who gained power in the interwar years, pretty much thought capitalism was capitalism and all they could do was nibble on the edges until the revolution.
The Swedes made the big leap to planning and coordination of capitalism, arguably a pleasant version of fascism. The New Deal in its early NRA phase was arguably fascist in impulse and derived from the same progressive management impulses as eugenics.
The crucial difference between fascism and socialism in regard to state power and the function of any markets is whether there is democratic control from the bottom-up by the working class.
If we wanted some ideal types:
Pure capitalism has no state power and complete control of markets by capital Pure fascism has no democracy with elite dominance of both the state and markets subordinated to that state Pure socialism has complete democratic control of the state and all market rules are constrained by that state. Pure anarchism has no state power and complete worker control of markets
Now, both ideal capitalism and anarchism are in my mind impossible because of the inevitability of coercion stepping into the vacuum and just the sheer usefulness of the state. So we end up with a range of variants on capitalism with certain fascist or socialist modifications and occasional "sandbox" anarchist functions (say open source software and other voluntary associations that undergird capitalism).
The reason fascism ties to eugenics and other nasty doctrines is that the elite usually needs to justify its own hierarchy. Nationalism, racism and purity are often useful for that purpose, as well as creating scapegoats to divide the working class.
-- Nathan Newman