Counter-arguments against the idea that left-wing means state intervention

[Red Hornet]

Im often told that socialism (and left-wing in general) is basically a synonym for state intervention or control, like progressive taxation, public services like police and fire departments, and social safety net programs like food stamps, and that right-wing is less government.

Therefore fascism is left-wing and Hitler and Mussolini were socialists because they believed in big government, and that corporatism is a form of socialism.

How do I argue with these idiots?

What are some examples of right-wing control of the economy?

[Texan]

Anyone who says that Hitler is left-wing is an idiot, and is only doing so because they want the argument to stop.

Hitler was not about unifying the country, but unifying one part of the country--the "aryans". He was a nationalist, first and foremost.

[GiantMonkeyMan]

Revolutionaries don't want to strengthen the state, we want to abolish it completely as well as the class society it upholds. Fascists are a right-wing reaction to revolutionaries and thus want a strong state in order to facilitate their national bourgeoisie's ability to challenge other national bourgeoisie in the world market and give capitalism a new lifeline. "So long as the state exists there is no freedom. When there is freedom, there will be no state." - Lenin

[Tim Cornelis]

What are some examples of right-wing control of the economy?

Answering this only leads to circular reasoning. If you demonstrate far-right ideologies using state control they'll say it is leftist because it involves state control.

Anyway, the political spectrum should be understood as egalitarianism (leftism) versus stratification (rightism).

Far-Left: Egalitarian society.
Left-Wing: Government actively seeks to diminish social stratification
Centre: Government seeks to curtail the excesses of social stratification
Right-Wing: Government inactive in seeking to diminish social stratification or affirms social stratification
Far-Right: Government encouraging social stratification

Of course, these are broad categories -- and many shades of gray exist -- and exist relative to a country's respective historical development. For instance, in the Netherlands right-wing parties also advocate progressive taxation, but to a lesser extent than do leftist parties.

Fascism encourages rigid hierarchy, militarism, traditional gender roles, class difference and stratification, and so affirms and encourages social stratification through state intervention. State intervention serves different ends.

Corporatism (which has nothing to do with corporations) is a social system that affirms inequality. For instance, a corporatist welfare state grants women with children a grant so she can stay at home working, while men with children are not. Hence, the traditional gender roles are affirmed by the state. Christian democratic parties forged such corporatist welfare states in Germany, the Netherlands, and Italy, amongst others.
Corporatism can also refer to the socio-economic system based on government sanctioned and facilitated collective bargaining that seeks to reconcile Labour (as represented by trade unions) and Capital (as represented by employer's associations).

[Venas Abiertas]

Explain that capitalism produces a crisis of overproduction: The sum total of workers produces more than what they can purchase or consume so capitalists must perpetually search for or artificially create new markets. This requires major state intervention through laws guaranteeing the protection of private property, to ensure that big companies have access to markets (controlling the airwaves, building huge ports and highways, making alternative medicines and foods ilegal, etc.) access to cheap labor (driving poor people out of their home countries, allowing them to slip through the borders and then denying them basic rights when they arrive on the other side) and using a multi-trillion dollar military to force other countries to open up their markets to our finished goods and sell us raw materials at low prices. Even our educational system is tailored to perpetuate capitalist values and paradigms.

All of this constitutes massive state intervention. Welfare programs are puny in comparison to the multiple trillions spent yearly on propping up the capitalist economy.

[Venas Abiertas]

Look at the billions spent on drug enforcement, not to mention the millions of otherwise law-abiding citizens incarcerated for drug offenses and marked for life after they get out.

How much is the DEA's budget every year? How much USA "foreign aid" goes to combat narcotics production in other countries? US foreign policy towards Latin America is completely dictated by that one concern alone. The USA opposes Latin American leaders solely on the basis of their support for US drug policy. If that doesn't constitute state intervention, what does?

[Queen Mab]

What are courts and police forces if not state intervention? What maintains the system of private property? The state. It's hypocritical to accuse others of promoting 'state intervention' while advocating the very existence of the state.

You can also go historical here and mention that capitalist society was founded by bloody state intervention the world over. Property sure as hell didn't accumulate to the bourgeoisie without any violent coercion.

[goalkeeper]

the whole left and right divide is pretty incoherent in america because the concept of left vs right emerged within europe to draw a division between those who supported the old feudal/monarchal regimes and those who supported to varying degrees revolution, democracy, and other bourgeois liberties. Eventually those who wanted to push further for socialism/communism instead instead of just bourgeois democracy (e.g. marx from radical left democrat to communist) were also viewed as left. There was no ancient regime in America so the distinction made little sense until in recent decades the distinction was incredibly vulgarised into meaning that right wing began to simply be associated with free market and state intervention with left in a very ahistorical sense - i mean, it would result in calling the old prussian state left because it favoured monopolies and German liberals who wanted to liberalise the economy right wing, which is pretty much the exact opposite as it was understood at the time. tl;dr: left/right grows out of european history and is confusing when not understood within that context