There is only one "ism"... totalitarianism, which itself is a name for the more basic concept of all governance, authoritarianism. Every other "ism" is a variance of that one "ism" developed to address the specific time and place where it's being applied.
Whether it's Soviet-style communism, Italian fascism, Euro socialism, Islamic theologism, British imperialism, Medieval monarchism, or Louis XIV mercantilism, it all boils down to the idea that the few (or the one) is best suited to decide for the many. It is a concentration of power.
The basic idea of the American experiment was the decentralization of that power. We have centralized power again, and are in fact back at that place that we broke away from back in 1776.
We are not going to "fall" to communism, but we are going to evolve into some sort of "ism" that is unique to us but still a form of authoritarianism. It can't be communism because we have been conditioned for decades to recoil at the very mention of the word. The idea of communism generates unalterable visions of brutality and oppression in our minds that will, in and of themselves, defeat any possible implementation of such a system. Socialism has very much the same baggage, so that won' work either, and even as we KNOW that Obama is a Socialist, even Socialists recoil from labeling him as such, because of the negative connotations that the terms carries with it. Proponents of authoritarianism can't sell failed systems to nations. They'll just invent a new "ism" for our time and our nation.
I call it Socialist Managerialism, or Managerial Socialism... take your pick.
There's one important thing to keep in mind about all this. The leaders of all these "ism" movements seldom (if ever) actually believe in the ideals they promote.
Here's an excerpt from an old American Thinker article that mentions one of Alexander Solzhenitsyn's less-known works, "Lenin in Zurich" (fiction):
We'll get our own, unique "ism".
Communism won't become the US "ism" for the simple reasons that (a) there is no stomache to truly destroy private property and expropriate everything from everyone (not the least because that would require massive armed conflict), and (b) a large segment of the so-called propertied class have in fact learned the lessons from yesteryear and are determined to not get caught flatfooted again; rather than outright opposition to the pro-socialist movement of the federal government, these interests have sidestepped in an effort to retain the essential attributes of their power/wealth - through management of the political process - and are willing to pay substantial "vigorish" to protect themselves. These interests are, by and large, corporate - Citigroup being a fine example - and extremely wealthy individuals like George Soros. That this is so is, I believe, evidenced by the growing crony capitalism under Obuttocks and the democrats; e.g., most of the so-called banking reform, like the regulation of "systemically important" banks, is essentially nothing more than protectionism for the big banks against their littler rivals, which is the
quid pro quo for allowing the democrats to impose more regulatory burdens on them and to exact more "fines" and etc. from them (that being part of the "vigorish" being paid for protection). This latter is, in its essential outline, so-called neo-corporatism, and follows the contours of European social corporativism.
This, ultimately, makes the difference between "falling" to communism or to socialism: communism brooks no other rival power bases and has only one class: the proletariat; accordingly, corporativism is anathema to communism; by contrast, corporativism is generally a necessary predicate to any comprehensive socialist government. This follows because corporativism depends upon the continued existence of a certain significant degree of private property and commerce, so long as the government, in alliance with the large labor and business interests (i.e., the unions and the large corporate businesses, like Citigroup), effectively controls/manages the broader economy and has the ability/power to lavish economic benefits on those it favors and strip all benefits from those it disfavors. The large labor and business interests are, of course, perfectly happy giving the government that power because that is essentially how they obtain protection from competition by smaller businesses, although few if any of them will ever say so publicly. Communism sees no need for any detente or compromise with the bourgeoisie - precisely the propertied class from whence the large business owners spring - and sees their continued private control over material resources as nothing more than theft, to be rectified by taking those resources back and giving them to their natural owners, the proletariat. There being no private business interests to deal with, independent, nongovernmental trade unions become beside the point, at best an inefficient waste of resources and at worst a refuge the bourgeoisie can use to hide from the proletariat and return to attack them at their most vulnerable points.
Ultimately, since corporativism is both the easier route to centralized control of the economy in the West, and since it has already become established in the West, including the US, through existing federal regulation of the economy, some form of socialism, not communism, is the most likely sort of "ism" to which the US will fall prey.
