How is free-market capitalism diffrent from facism or social democracy?

[cokezero100]

In what ways do they differ in each others respects from conventional capitalism. After all, capitalist institutions like stock markets,private companies,ect:can exist comfortablely as far to the right as fascism or as far to the left as social democracy!

[fredrick z]

These are all generalizations but hopefully point out some differences.

Free market capitalism relies on the self interests of the purchaser of goods and services to select those goods and services that are of good quality and affordable. In this way all vendors of the goods or services have an economic incentive to improve quality and reduce prices.

Socialism, says that for many goods and services capitalism is not the best model. Social programs (hence the name socialism) requires a pooling of resources and a requirement to relegate profits to a secondary position. Universal health care is an example, and while not perfect arguably it produces a healthier population overall than the capitalist model.

Democratic Socialism is socialism in which the people rather than a central government decide which programs, and to what extent those social programs will be exempt from the need to be self sustaining through profits, i.e., the capitalist model.

Fascism is the theory that a single controlling authority that has knowledge of "all" the facts should dictate social policy. Under fascism, the western model of capitalism doesn't work. Interestingly the application of fascism is closer to the theory of communism than it is to socialism.