I agree that calling Nazism left-wing is a misrepresentation, and it's one that is almost always used in bad faith. However, if by "socialism" we mean "a political and economic theory of social organization which advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole", then it's fair to call fascism a combination of nationalism and socialism. As far as I understand, Mussolini started out as a socialist, but a bit later in life he rejected international socialism and instead embraced the combination of a form of socialism (in the sense given above) with nationalism. Fascism is not socialism, but it does incorporate socialist elements and was influenced by the socialist movement.
Now, if one insists that the term "socialism" be restricted to political and economic systems that do away with (or try to do away with) hierarchy then yes, fascism is not socialist, since fascism explicitly values hierarchy.
So basically, it depends on what one means by "socialism".
In any authoritarian system that assigns control of the means of production to the state, the means of production are controlled by the authority on the top, not by the community as a whole. Your attempt at justifying combining them relies on the fiction that state control is community control, and specifically that this is true in a dictatorial state. But the idea that a system that explicitly denies the vast majority of the community input or relevance in the rule is one where the community exercises control is ludicrous.
This is why you'll see pretty much every dictatorial regime that has claimed to be socialist have tried to justify their regimes by pretending to be democratic. E.g. China even today holds on to a total fiction of a multi-party political system [1] (note: I'm talking here only about the legal parties that colludes with the CPC; not about the suppressed opposition parties) including a comical "continuation" of the Kuomintang. Others have justified a claim to "democracy" by arguing systems of approval or internal party processes ensures democracy. But a fictional democracy does not grant control to the community as a whole.
That said, it is important to remember that Marx warned about reactionary forms of socialism already in the Communist Manifesto, calling out supporters of reactionary feudal systems that wanted to leverage socialist ideas to keep their people in line. The modern attempt to treat socialism as a single system rather than as a set of characteristics that can be applied to a huge range of otherwise mutually conflicting systems - including inherently regressive ones - confuses matters.
Does "socialism" ever mean "free-market capitalism"? It often seems that libertarians are on the receiving end of the "Nazi" label because they object to socialism or government intervention in markets.
It was not my intention to begin an argument, but merely suggest that we should all tone down on the "Nazi" slur as it no longer seems to carry any weight.
>Does "socialism" ever mean "free-market capitalism"?
I would say no.
>It often seems that libertarians are on the receiving end of the "Nazi" label because they object to socialism or government intervention in markets.
I think this happens mainly for three reasons. 1) Some people support socialism so furiously that they genuinely think pretty much everyone who opposes socialism is part of the same group of "reactionaries", etc. 2) Some people dislike libertarians and try to smear them by calling them Nazis. 3) A certain subset of self-identified libertarians has had, historically, and continues to have now, an involvement with populist conservatism and with right-wing regimes such as Pinochet's. There is also a subset of self-identified libertarians who promote racism, a subset who lean socially conservative, etc.
Some self-proclaimed libertarians oppose socialism so furiously that they view right-wing dictatorship as being a better option. Personally, I'd say that people like that are not libertarians at all, but they continue to self-identify as libertarians nonetheless.
> Some self-proclaimed libertarians oppose socialism so furiously that they view right-wing dictatorship as being a better option. Personally, I'd say that people like that are not libertarians at all, but they continue to self-identify as libertarians nonetheless.
Wholeheartedly agree here. Libertarianism is by essence, anti-authoritarianism. You can't be a libertarian and at the same time, want an authority to dictate the rulebook.
For me, socialism and fascism are two sides of the same coin, that Horseshoe Theory is a real phenomenon. Of course, the two sides both vehemently disagree that they are alike (which is certainly the case if you specifically consider the ethno-nationalism of the Nazi's for instance), but the overall framework of both socialism and fascism is the centralized rule of a population through a dogmatic ideology with force or threat of force for noncompliance.
There's an interesting phenomena in reverse of the "authoritarian libertarian" too, which is the "restricted speech liberal" - those self-labelling as liberals who are opposed to free speech.
> Wholeheartedly agree here. Libertarianism is by essence, anti-authoritarianism. You can't be a libertarian and at the same time, want an authority to dictate the rulebook.
Libertarianism started on the far left for exactly this reason. The term was coined by the anarcho-communist Joseph Dejacque in a letter where he criticised Proudhon, the founder of anarchism, for not going far enough.
For a century libertarianism was inherently tied to anarchism and anarcho-communism and other forms of libertarian socialism that sees private property rights as inherently in conflict with liberty (Dejaque, already in his initial criticism of Proudhon, did call out Proudhons famous "property as theft" as something he agreed with)
> but the overall framework of both socialism and fascism is the centralized rule of a population through a dogmatic ideology with force or threat of force for noncompliance.
Centralized rule of any kind is inherently in conflict with a long range of socialist ideologies. Enough so that the Bolsheviks murdered a huge amount of socialists that opposed their coup.
Now, if one insists that the term "socialism" be restricted to political and economic systems that do away with (or try to do away with) hierarchy then yes, fascism is not socialist, since fascism explicitly values hierarchy.
So basically, it depends on what one means by "socialism".