Special to L. Neil Smith’s The Libertarian Enterprise

Marxism is the incoherent and inconsistent theoretical political/anti-religious/economic system spelled out by Karl Marx in The Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital. Adherents claim it’s never been done right, but that’s because it’s self-contradictory and impossible of accomplishment.

Marx’s system does away with private property and insists on public everything, particularly education and child rearing. Note that Marx’s system was supposed to lead to the eventual “withering” of the state, which has not happened. One of the contradictions.

Socialism is supposed to be Marx’s system, but as generally implemented it’s a system of government control of the economy which retains some private ownership and a facade of benign democracy while providing supposed egalitarian benefits under the control of government technocrats

Communism refers to the system traced back to Lenin that attempted to implement an international socialism under the overt or covert control of the Russian Soviet government, with effective government ownership of all property which was assigned to the people for their use.

In practice, Communist party members (based on registration, perhaps not true belief) got benefits not available to the masses. Also note that Russia and Mao’s China (now Xi’s) as heads of separate international communist movements is contrary to Communist principles.

Fascism is a variant of socialism which retains the form of private ownership of property and corporations, but requires subservience to national needs, e.g. Nationalist Socialism, or Nazi.

Expansionist nationalism, institutional racism, religious bigotry, and religious mysticism are frequent components of fascism but are not necessary to its economic implementation.

FDR’s definition of fascism was effectively a government run by a clandestine oligarchy or plutarchy, primarily for their benefit, which doesn’t appear to square with fascism as practiced by the Nazi movements in Europe in the inter-war years.

In summary, there has never been a perfect Marxist / socialist / communist / fascist society, any more than there has been a perfect capitalist society. Every society reflects the personality and influences of its rulers/thought leaders, for good or ill.

The US is presently being pulled (at least) three ways—Libertarian/traditionally liberal capitalism, corporatist “crony” capitalism (most RINOs), and progressive socialism/fascism (other RINOs and most Democrat, with a few leaning to the international communist model).

(For example, Sanders and Cortez). Whether you think socialism or fascism best describes the Dems may depend on where you think Soros and Bloomberg fit in the hierarchy of attempted plutarchs. That said, the modern “Antifa” is the opposite of anti-fascist….

And that’s that.