Answer:
The source of the similarity between the two ideologies is that both want to impose politically-chosen ends on everybody. The main source of difference is that each system coercively favors and harms different groups of individuals in society.
Comparing moderate fascism to communism (which is extreme socialism), Dennis chooses the former. Somewhat surprisingly, he refers to Ludwig von Mises’s and F.A. Hayek’s arguments about the impossibility of calculation under communism:
In so far as property rights and private enterprise are concerned, however, the strongest argument for fascism instead of communism may be found in the regulatory functions of an open market. The strongest criticism of any socialism of complete expropriation is that it leaves no free market, no pricing mechanism and no valid basis for economic calculation. Pure socialism is collective ownership and unified central direction of material instruments of production which, sooner or later, must leave little or no freedom of choice for the individual as to consumption or occupation. These criticisms may be brought up to date and made relevant to communism in operation in Russia in the symposium of Professors Hayek, Pierson, Barone, Halm and von Mises entitled Collectivist Economic Planning, and the work of Professor Boris Brutzkus entitled Economic Planning in Soviet Russia. (pp. 177-178)
Dennis exaggerates the place of markets—of free markets—under fascism. In “Why Hayek Was Right about Nazis Being Socialists” (AIER, December 8, 2020), Richard Ebeling mentions many similarities between socialism and the Nazi brand of fascism. He is responding to Ronald Granieri who, in a Washington Post article, objected to the argument that the National Socialists were indeed socialists “The Right Needs to Stop Falsely Claiming that the Nazis Were Socialists,” February 5, 2020).
Given the logic of state power, fascism is likely to steamroll obstacles in the path of the state and thus economic freedom. Moreover, fascism’s heightened nationalism is likely to lead to war against foreign or internal scapegoats. Fascists hate different minorities (the Jews, for example) than socialists hate (the merchants and the rich). Dennis naïvely dismisses these dangers.
Explanation:
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