How May Enforcement Of Sound Capitalism Support And Enforce Better Fiscal Gains

What is the difference between totalitarianism and fascism?

totalitarianism is a reference to the amount of government involvement in private affairs.
fascism is a political movement that puts the financial and military elites at the helm of policy making. Fascism purports that society is a living organism and therefore it must be purged from the "disease" of socialism. It is reactionary in it very basis. It was created by bussiness leaders supporting mob leaders to counter the growing womens and labor movement.
Fascism distrusts democracy and therefore tends to support very strong executives. A strong executive is conceived as being authoritarian. Since fascism sees socialism as a disease, it tends to take totalitarian forms in its efforts to involve itself with every day life and destroy any trace of socialism or dissent wherever it may be found.

Hope this helps. PEACE.

edit: other answers are misguided. Totalitarianism is not necessarily fascistic. It is not even necessarily anti democratic. For example, the prohibition of drugs is a classic example of a totalitarian measure and it is enforced in most democracies. Also, socialism, which is opposite to fascism, has taken form in totalitarian governments.

Totalitarianism is about the degree of governmental power
Authoritarianism is about the degree of executive power
Fascism is specifically about an organic conception of society to be protected along the tenets of traditional european values (particularly a bourgeois conception of ancien regime values a la Napoleon II)... heh, hope this helps.


and: I like Brodier's answer... disagree on the need to be authoritarian, but agree that both have been historically authoritarian. (if you forget about Sparta and Rome)

Marxism vs. Socialism vs. Communism vs. Libertarianism?

Communism, socialism and marxism are all interrelated--

Socialism calls for government control of the means of production (ie nationalization of key industries) and the distribution of resources in an egalitarian manner to citizens seeking to ensure that everyone can meet basic needs.

Most first world countries (the US included) have at least some socialist features such as nationalized control over education and health systems, government pensions for old people, unemployment insurance and so on, though western economies as a whole tend to be mostly private (ie liberal).

Communism (and Marxism, which is another term for Communism) is essentially a hard core form of socialism where the entire economy is controlled by the government, there is little or no private property, etc. In practice communist states have tended to be dictatorships (whomever runs the government runs, well, everything) though the waters are now somewhat muddied because the main 'communist' country, China, has long since embraced capitalism.

Libertarianism essentially argues that government should be as limited as possible, doing nothing more than providing military defence, a police force, and the enforcement of contracts. Laws governing private action should be extremely minimal, etc. It's mostly likely invoked to produce an extreme contrast with socialism. It is possible that you might also be confusing libertarianism with liberalism, which classically means support for a relatively limited government and person freedom for the individual (current liberals and conservatives in the US will generally claim to be classical liberals.)

Or in a nutshell:

libertarianism and communism are extreme forms of liberalism and socialism respectively.

Also people who call Obama a socialist are mostly wrong. People who call him a Marxist are crazy, and anyone who accuses him of being a libertarian is probably confused.