Individual Freedom or Central Control?

Centralized power violates personal freedom - How?

Fascism, Nazism, socialism, communism, and authoritarianism have several elements in common. They are all opposed to freedom, individualism, and capitalism. They share an obsession with “struggle” that seeks to prevent people from organizing society in a relatively spontaneous, low-hierarchy way that naturally tends toward personal freedom and market exchange (capitalism).

(The term “liberal” is used in the traditional sense that people should organize their own lives free of government control.)

1. Classical liberalism and capitalism emphasize private property, voluntary exchange, limited government, and individual rights.

   • Marxism/communism explicitly aims to abolish private ownership of the means of production and replace market coordination with planned or collective control.

   • Fascism and Nazism rejected both Marxist internationalism and liberal capitalism. They allowed private property in form but subordinated it to the state and the nation/race; independent civil society and free political competition were crushed.

   • Authoritarian regimes of various stripes generally cannot tolerate the dispersed decision-making and independent power centers that markets and free association create.
     In this broad sense, all of these systems stand against the combination of economic and political liberty that characterizes liberal capitalism.

2. The centrality of “struggle.” Note a recurring rhetorical and conceptual theme:

   • Marx: history as class struggle.

   • Hitler: Mein Kampf (“My Struggle”) and the idea of racial struggle for existence.

   • Certain Islamic interpretations of jihad as permanent religious-social struggle.

   Many revolutionary and totalitarian movements frame politics as an existential, zero-sum conflict that justifies extraordinary measures, suppression of dissent, and the concentration of power. This contrasts with liberal views that treat politics as a framework for managing competing interests under rules rather than as permanent warfare.

3. Hostility to spontaneous order
   Liberal thinkers (Adam Smith, Hayek, etc.) argue that complex social coordination can emerge from individuals pursuing their own ends under general rules, with relatively limited hierarchy.
   Revolutionary ideologies of the left and right have often viewed such spontaneous orders with suspicion, seeing them as chaotic, unjust, or insufficiently directed toward a higher purpose (the classless society, the nation, the race, the revolution). They therefore seek to impose a deliberate, hierarchical redesign of society.

4. Distinguishing the ideologies
   Treating fascism/Nazism, socialism, and communism as essentially the same phenomenon blurs important differences:

   • Economic structure: Marxism aims at collective ownership and the eventual abolition of the state. Fascism and Nazism preserved private property and traditional hierarchies while imposing heavy state direction and rejecting class struggle in favor of national or racial unity.

   • View of equality: Communism is egalitarian in theory (even if not in practice). Nazism was explicitly hierarchical and racialist.

   • Attitude toward tradition: Many forms of socialism and communism were revolutionary and anti-traditional. Fascism often presented itself as defending or restoring national tradition against both liberalism and Marxism. Lumping them together as one single “pathology” weakens analytical clarity.

Concepts of struggle appear in many places: evolutionary biology, classical republicanism, certain religious traditions, and even some defenses of capitalism (creative destruction, competition). The distinctive feature of these authoritarian ideologies is not the mere presence of the word “struggle,” but the elevation of struggle into a totalizing political principle that justifies unlimited means.

There is a genuine and important opposition between liberal orders based on individual rights, private property, and voluntary coordination on one side, and systems (whether left-totalitarian or right-totalitarian) that treat politics as permanent existential struggle and concentrate power to remake society according to a comprehensive vision.

Revolutionary and totalitarian ideologies of both left and right have repeatedly rejected the liberal combination of individual rights, private property, and limited government. They have often framed politics as an existential struggle that justifies the suppression of spontaneous social cooperation in favor of directed, hierarchical control. This stands in lasting tension with the principles of a free society and a market economy.

Totalitarianism and Its Differences

Revolutionary and totalitarian ideologies—whether of the left (Marxist-Leninist communism) or the right (fascism and National Socialism)—share a fundamental hostility to liberal orders based on individual rights, private property, voluntary exchange, and limited government.

They reject the idea that society can and should largely organize itself through spontaneous cooperation and decentralized decision-making. Instead, they treat politics as an existential struggle (class struggle, racial struggle, national struggle) that justifies the concentration of power, the suppression of independent social life, and the forced reconstruction of society according to a comprehensive vision.

In this respect they stand opposed to the principles that sustain freedom and market economies.

Aspect	Marxist-Leninist Communism	Fascism / National Socialism
Core conflict	Class struggle	National or racial struggle
View of private property	To be abolished	Formally preserved but subordinated to the state
Attitude toward equality	Egalitarian in theory (classless society)	Explicitly hierarchical and anti-egalitarian
View of tradition	Often revolutionary and anti-traditional	Frequently presents itself as defending or restoring national tradition
Ultimate goal	Classless, stateless communist society	Powerful, unified nation or racial state
Internationalism	Explicitly internationalist	Ultra-nationalist or racialist

Totalitarian movements of both left and right are united by their rejection of liberal freedom and spontaneous social order. They elevate “struggle” into a total political principle and seek to replace dispersed, voluntary cooperation with hierarchical command. They differ sharply in the content of their vision: one aims at classless equality through the abolition of private property; the other aims at national or racial dominance while retaining a subordinated form of property. Recognizing both the common opposition to liberalism and these deep differences is necessary for an accurate understanding.