You'd be hard pressed to find a historian, economist or political scientist who would call any of the 20th century's right-wing dictatorships 'socialist', regardless as to the extent of state intervention into the economy.

Also, free movement of capital and 'Freedom' are not at all the same thing, and don't always exist in the same places at the same time. Capitalism can totally exist where there isn't a democracy. China. Russia. Sure, it looks different from western capitalism, but it sure as hell isn't socialism.

Sure, but to the extent that those economies are capitalist, they are also more free because freedom of ownership and freedom to benefit from the fruits of one's labour are real freedoms.

You mean like “National Socialist German Workers' Party”?!

I always found it funny they call it far right.

That's called branding. The name was chosen to be appealing to the German people, not to be an accurate description of their form of government. Unless you think North Korea (official name "Democratic People's Republic of Korea") is actually a democratic republic, this should not be a difficult concept to understand.

Right, because National Socialism was a system in which a dictator for life ran a single party system running a command economy and police state, with systematic persecution of minorities and dissenters, while Russian Communism in contrast was... er... completely different than that... somehow.

It wasn’t just the name: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazism#Economics

I mean that article goes on and on about how anti-Marxist the Nazis were. They essentially claimed that they were the "true" socialist and Marxists weren't. Much like how North Korea would probably say that they are the true democracy and everyone else isn't.

> Our adopted term 'Socialist' has nothing to do with Marxist Socialism. Marxism is anti-property; true Socialism is not

> The Nazis claimed that communism was dangerous to the well-being of nations because of its intention to dissolve private property, its support of class conflict, its aggression against the middle class, its hostility towards small business and its atheism.[205] Nazism rejected class conflict-based socialism and economic egalitarianism, favouring instead a stratified economy with social classes based on merit and talent, retaining private property and the creation of national solidarity that transcends class distinction.

So they did have their own definition of "socialism" that they met, but that definition had virtually nothing in common with the way that the rest of the world defines it.

I still find it funny that people dare to call the Democratic People's Republic of Korea a dictatorship. Names are sound and smoke, as Goethe said.

> state was deeply involved in the economy, thus making it socialist.

>Capitalism requires freedom, the opposite of dictatorship.

You clearly have some amount of misunderstanding or an active bias/axe to grind. Suffice to say, that's not what any of those terms mean.

Socialism - “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“

That definition clearly excludes any dictatorship because a dictatorship is by definition controlled by a dictator, not by the community as a whole.

"Community as a whole" is keyword for the State/Goverment, as the practical representant of the community. And the dictator is/controls the state.

State-controlled markets are not automatically socialist, they can for example be communist in nature too.

Capitalism doesn't require a free market. As evidenced by American ISP's, all you need is capital and the will to have more of it plus the cooperation of the government.

Freedom is not involved in Capitalism nor is it an evident feature of it.

By Capitalism people usually mean the freedom to own capital, the freedom to invest or spend it as one likes and the freedom to benefit individually from the fruits of one's labour. These are all real freedoms.

If we redefine it so that Maoism, Leninism and even Marxism are all forms of capitalism then it really loses it's usefulness as a term and makes it impossible to understand what most people have ever said or written about it.

>These are all real freedoms.

Nah, those are madeup freedoms for humans. Freedom isn't something real you can touch, smell or measure. And it should be mentioned that the entire first paragraph on Wikipedia about Capitalism doesn't mention freedom at all. The only instance of the word "free" in the opening section is in relation to "free market capitalism", a version of capitalism.

>If we redefine it so that Maoism, Leninism and even Marxism are all forms of capitalism then it really loses it's usefulness as a term and makes it impossible to understand what most people have ever said or written about it.

Not really nor did I do these things. Leninism as for example experienced in East Germany was decidedly different to the Social Market Capitalism in West Germany, one is a Capitalistic Market and the other is not. However, there is nothing about the East that makes a Capitalistic Market or even Free Market impossible.

Yes ikea in east germany, a lot of companies collaborate with oppressive regimes from Africa

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/business/...

"Capitalism requires free markets"

I don't think that's true. Under the Nazis plenty of businesses did well despite not having free markets. In the end capitalists want to make money first

A bunch of state-run or government friendly companies making money does not make it a capitalist regime.

Why? There were property rights and people invested their capital to make money. What else do you need for capitalism?

Working Markets. In which you are free to enter, free to sell your products and services, free to set your prices, free to purchase or to refuse to.

The more regulated and less free a market, the less capitalist and more socialist it is.

That was true for most businesses during the Nazi time and it is true in China now. It was also true during military dictatorships in South America. You can't call all of them socialist or the label loses its meaning.