The definition Mary Anne sited is interesting. I looked up fascism a while back and got the same verbiage from a couple of different sources.

And it's descriptive. There's no economic theory behind it, basically says a dictatorship with central control (duh!) and socio-economic control of the population (another "duh"). Seems to go with "dictatorship". It's strictly a political matter, and could well apply to a capitalist country. I think Vietnam is moving to that kind of central political authority with capitalistic small businesses.

The definition of communism you sited had theory behind it. Id described an economic system, characterized by central authority. Now, the US is reasonably capitalist, and it has a central authority behind it's financial system, I believe, without being a dictatorship. Yet.

The "advocated" the overthrow of capitalism by the proletariat may be overstated a bit. I think they said it would happen, was an evolutionary process, not sure how much they "advocated" it. They weren't far off.

In the US there was a form of modification to capitalism which prevented an overthrow. Notwithstanding the beliefs of some, capitalism was harsh, and tended to disregard the workers without which capital is worthless. (I know, it's hard to believe.) When success is measured by profit, other concerns are by definition secondary.

In the US, rather than overthrowing capitalism, the workers stayed within the system. One of the big factors preventing that revolution by the proletariat, which would have been through the ballot box, was the rise of unions. Unions helped workers gain an increased standard of living, health care, and so on, by threatening capitalism's bottom line. That's the only thing to which capitalism responds. (Watched a "special" on drug companies last night. Informative, and the chairman of Merck affirmed just that.)

I will acknowledge there have been union excesses. In my local paper there was a front-page report on a $20 million bogus loan from the Teamsters Central States Pension Fund. Same paper, page 4 of the business section, a short article on GE, AT&T, Westinghouse, and some others being convicted of a $400 million price-fixing scheme in the Northeast states. That was 4 brief paragraphs long.)

Unions then helped form a larger middle class, giving workers a stake in the system. The middle class also provided a greater market for as well as generate a wider market for the goods and services capitalism provides so well.

The longterm erosion of the middle-class in America bodes ill for the long-term stability of the society. For one thing, the markets for goods and services shrinks. You can't trust unrestrained capital any more than unrestrained labor, unrestrained government, unrestrained armed forces, or whatever.

Arf