“The short-fingered vulgarian”

it's also worth noting this pattern of ebb and flow, subjugation and liberation, is as old as civilization itself. political theorists didn't invent any of this, they just wrote down what the dissidents of their age were doing. fascism wasn't created in the 1920s, it was merely named. Karl Marx didn't create communism, he just named what he saw people working towards. for as long as humans have lived in hierarchical societies, they have discussed and planned how to bring about an end to these hierarchies that they suffer under.

Mussolini was more honest about it (inasmuch as a fascist can be honest). Despite having practically invented the term, he admitted that fascism should really be called corporatism, as it was a merger of state and corporate power.

Of course he still called it fascism, though, because it was a (then) meaningless name with roots on the Roman empire which could be attractive to his supporters. If he'd called it by its proper name probably no one would have supported it, other than the oligarchs in charge.

The hierarchies present in the USSR didn't take the form of income inequality

Wonderful, do you have any numeric data to present?

Non-income sources of access to goods and services perhaps? Such as the universal access to jobs, and universal access to housing mostly through the work union? Universal access to education to the highest level for free? Widely available, high quality, dense, affordable, high frequency public transit? High quantity of public sport facilities, art centres and so-called "culture houses"? Which of those was, numerically and with data, less egalitarian in the USSR?

the comparison I would make in that case, which would be between the initial revolutionary movement and where it ended up

The graph goes from pre-revolution, to Bolshevism, and to capitalism. You can see that income inequality remained somewhat stable during Socialism, and was much lower than before or after.

Oh, you mean state-owned dachas that many politicians of the high spheres of the party shared, and none of which was actually Stalin's property? Was the White House Obama's property?

How many of said "dachas belonging to Stalin" were inherited by his children, as expected if he owned them?

What somebody formally owns and gets in income isn't the same as the wealth they actually control in authoritarian systems

Great, why don't you provide us with some numerical metrics of that in the Soviet Union vs. modern Russia or USA? Or are you possibly just making it up without evidence?

wealth equality through being poor isn't that brilliant

I agree. So did the soviets, and that's why they took a backwards feudal nation in Europe with 85% of the population composed of exploited peasants with an average life expectancy of 28 years, and industrialized the country until it was the second world power, the majority of the population were city dwellers with modern lives and amenities, and rose life expectancy to 70+ years.

it's why us lefties focus more on systems than on people. a marxist approach to history reveals that this has been happening and likely continue happening until we muster some fundamental change in how we organize. it's like there's an 80 year cyclical race where the "revolution" (not the revolution) happens, people accept that it's not perfect, but it's an improvement, they fail to educate their children about the problems with the old regime and the current regime, until eventually a time comes when no one remembers the last cycle anymore and the whole process gets repeated.

fwiw, i thought what you were saying was pretty clear hence posting the fascism definition comic that just takes what you said and puts doodles to it. but for some reason you got downvoted to hell and i got hella upvotes. i even looked at lemvotes and saw several people downvoting you and upvoting me, which i find confusing. it seems like lemmy is going through a weird moment

That makes sense and I agree with you, I got a bit confused by the the way it's phrased since I felt like it implied "Good kicks out bad, good becomes the bad" infinite loop. But general enshittification of most things is a very strong trend in history.

I've read about a bunch of "Power consolidation - > one man controls all - > successor is unqualified - > people get upset - > regime change". Have an upvote for intention :)