Mises on Communist and Fascist Varieties of Socialism

"The history of mankind is the history of ideas.  For it is ideas, theories and doctrines that guide human action, determine the ultimate ends men aim at, and the choice of the means employed for the attainment of these ends...

"Such people [anti-social individuals] condemn the formalism of the due process of law.  Why should the laws hinder the government from resorting to beneficial measures?  Is it not fetishism to make the laws supreme and not expediency?  They advocate the substitution of the welfare state (Wohlfahrsstaat) for the state governed by the rule of law (Rechtsstaat).  In this welfare state, paternal government should be free to accomplish all things it considers beneficial to the commonweal.  No 'scraps of paper' should restrain an enlightened ruler in his endeavors to promote the general welfare.  All opponents must be crushed mercilessly lest they frustrate the beneficial action of the government. No empty formalities must protect them any longer against their well-deserved punishment.

"It is customary to cal the point of view of the advocates of the welfare state the 'social' point of view as distinguished from the 'individualistic' and 'selfish' point of view of the champions of the rule of law.  In fact, however, the supporters of the welfare state are utterly anti-social and intolerant zealots.  For their ideology tacitly implies that the government will exactly execute what they themselves deem right and beneficial....  They want to exterminate all opponents, that is, all who disagree with them.  They are utterly intolerant and are not prepared to allow any dessension, Every advocate of the welfare state and of planning is a potential dictator.  What he plans is to deprive all other men of all their rights, and to establish his own and his friends' unrestricted omnipotence.  He refuses to convince his fellow-citizens.  He prefers to 'liquidate' them.  He scorns the 'bourgeois' society that worships law and legal procedure. H himself worships violence and bloodshed....

"This was the true meaning of the Lenin revolution.  All the traditional ideas of right and legality were overthrown.  The rule of unrestrained violence and usurpation was substituted for the rule of law.... They we free to kill ad libitum.  Man's innate impulses towards violent extermination of all whom he dislikes, repressed by a long and wearisome evolution, burst forth.  The demons were unfettered.  A new age, the age of the usurpers, dawned.  The gangsters were called to action, and they listened to the Voice....

"It is important to realize that Fascism and Nazism were socialist dictatorships.  The communists, both the registered members of the communist parties and the fellow-travelers, stigmatize Fasism and Nazism as the highest and last and most depraved stage of capitalism.  This is in perfect agreement with their habit of calling every party which does not unconditionally surrender to the dictates of Moscow - even the German Social Democrats, the classical party of Marxism - hirelings of capitalism....

"In recent years the communists' semantic innovations have gone even further.  They call everybody whom they dislike, every advocate of of the free enterprise system, a Fascist....

"Dictatorship and violent oppression of all dissenters are today exclusively socialist institutions.  This becomes clear as we take a closer look at Fascism and Nazism."

~ Ludwig von Mises, 1947
"Planned Chaos"
Published in the 1951 edition of Mises's Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis, pp. 566-573