Le Mises Institute se fend d'un article tranchant sur les liens entre fascisme et socialisme et analyse le cas des... Etats-Unis:
What is the link between fascism and socialism? They are stages on a continuum of economic control, one that begins in intervention in the free market, moves toward regimentation and greater rigidity, marches toward socialism as failures increase, and ends in dictatorship.
The fascist system, wrote Mises, "clung first to the same principles of economic policies which all not outright socialist governments have adopted in our day, interventionism. Then later it turned step by step toward the German system of socialism, i.e., all-round state control of economic activities." (...)To extend their control, the fascists bolstered fiscal expenditures with debt and monetary inflation. Not only did they hope thereby to dominate more and more industries with their expenditures, but also to boost public support for their regimes by generating economic prosperity. Instead, their reckless spending and inflating set in motion the boom-bust cycle. They took the depression as an opportunity to extend their power further by socializing investment with regulations while claiming that such measures would stabilize the business cycle.
The fascists found a readymade theoretical justification for stabilization policies in the work of John Maynard Keynes. (...)The fascist form of interventionism in America was built on the rump of state corporatism that emerged during the Progressive Era and the experience of state planning during the First World War. The former culminated in the establishment of the Federal Reserve System to fully centralize state control of banks and monetary inflation and the latter set precedents for New Deal programs.
With the Fed in full swing, the Italian pattern during the Great Depression was seen in America, also. Monetary inflation and credit expansion during the 1920s led to the bust which was used to justify greater state control of investment, through fiscal expenditures and regulation. Like Mussolini, Hoover used protectionism to favor certain producers, increased funding for public works programs, and bailed out key businesses. (...)
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