Nazis Are Not Socialists

Heh, yeah, some fallacies never die. I’ve argued the pretty much the same thing with many a libertarian and Randian.

Funny, it’s Rand herself, and her followers, in their apologias for the genocide of Native Americans come closer to Nazism than any real socialist. Hitler was a great fan of Western movies and fiction (Karl May was one of his favorite authors) and indeed he admired the United States as a continental power because it had pursued a policy of genocide against its original inhabitants, and wanted to emulate that same policy in Eastern Europe. The United States for its part knew it was guilty of genocide, which is why it refused to sign the United Nations convention against genocide in 1948, because it knew it would be guilty on all five counts, some practices did not stop until the 1970s.

I’d also add that Rand’s first works in the 1930s, written during a time when fascism was on the march, in all the countries in Europe (including democracies like France) and in China (Chiang’s Blue Shirts) didn’t sound the alarm of fascism threatening her sacred ‘individualism’ at all. Instead, she focused on the dangers of Soviet communism; fascism she apparently thought wasn’t worth commenting about. Maybe, just maybe, that’s because Rand’s heroic capitalist ‘individualist’ was uncomfortably close to Hitler’s fuhrerprinzip and *his* celebration of ‘individualism’? These types seem to ignore or forget how fascists celebrated ‘great men’ who towered over the unwashed masses.

Right-e-o!

Fuck Jonah Goldberg, who has made a living and a career off this misdirection.

The government will not protect the economic interests of the German people by the circuitous method of an economic bureaucracy to be organised by the state, but by the utmost furtherance of private initiative and by the recognition of the rights of property. ~ Adolph Hitler to The Reichstag in 1933

Totalitarianism is a different axis. People driven to power don’t really care about “their” system, whether it even works or not, just the power.

Hmm … the Nazis were some species of socialist, while being fanatically anti-Communist. Hitler was clearly pro-labor in his background and sympathies. Would you say Stalin wasn’t a communist because he ended up alienating factories from the workers, and fighting a nationalist war?

Does “right” mean blood and soil, or laissez-faire capitalism? The two are often in stark conflict. You can see this tension again today: many alt-right, whom the media would call extreme far-right, are for single-payer healthcare, thus to the left of both major parties on that issue.

What is the definition of “socialist” we are working with here?

Are you trying to say something definitive about Nazi’s or socialists or both? Are you saying “socialists” are always and everywhere the reasonable, humane good guys? I am not sure political identities, ideologies and programs work that way.

I have seen people try to explain interwar fascism as if it was a coherent ideology. I have seen people try to impose a one-dimensional left-right categorization of political programs.
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The Nazi’s called themselves national socialists for strategic propagandistic reasons. There was a purpose at work. The Bolsheviks called their states, the People’s Democratic Republic of . . . . Despite constitutions and parliaments, these were not liberal representative democracies. This is how language is used in politics.

In ten thousand places across the internet this morning, you can find people labeling centrist policy, “neoliberal” and in another ten thousand, people denying that that label means anything definite or specific and this argument is often employed as part of an apparent attempt to defend the merits of neoliberal policy.

What the Nazi’s are to us, as symbols of political evil in a narrative of the good war and a holocaust almost no one alive remembers, is not what the Nazi’s were to Germans circa 1930.

There was some discussion in the other thread on Charlottesville and the affection the center bears for the authoritarian right of parallels to the 1920s and 1930s. You cannot understand as a matter of historic reality who the Nazi’s were unless you understand who the Germans were between the wars.

The political regime of the German Empire had used the fervent nationalism of Germany to instigate a war. The political psychology — and it was a psychology not a philosophical debate — that led the fragile empires of Europe into a general war is difficult to fathom now, but maybe we have some faint whiff now as we watch the Russia hysteria. For Germany, WWI was a national effort, an act of national will that swallowed individual identity.

It happened that the Social Democrats had risen very rapidly in the immediate pre-war period to become the predominant political party in a parliament that had not yet imposed its authority on the monarchy, the aristocracy, the military or the bureaucracy. The imminence of that political evolution may have something to do with the anxiety and irresponsibility that decided instead for war. In the collapse after the war, the Social Democrats inherited official power, but Germany inherited a degenerate and fractured political culture. The intense experience of national effort had ended in disaster. The wound to the national psychology was gaping and the economic catastrophe set in motion by the war just added to the craziness.

That actual Nazi’s wanted to call themselves socialists was a tribute of sorts.

The opening to authoritarianism, however, was in the dysfunction, political and economic. Elites were unwilling to solve problems rationally and responsibly, within Germany or anywhere in Europe really. For the deliberation democratic politics requires, that sapping of political will is deadly.

And, it seems to me that a politics of symbolism not economic substance built around the narcissism of personal identity and virtue has something to do with it. For the interwar Germans, the narcissistic wound was deep and intense and shared. The institutions of Weimar did not figure in German self-regard or confidence in the ability to govern themselves.

I do not think Americans want to govern themselves today. Establishment Democrats less than many Republicans. Occupy was many good things, but it did not express a wish to rule. The rote anti-state gibberish of libertarians on the right is an invitation to authoritarianism. antifa wants political theatre. So do the Democrats in Congress who want to take away Ivanka’s security clearance.

It is a problem.

For the U.S., the turn toward authoritarianism went into overdrive with Obama. I think Ian’s commentariat is ready to recognize that, but most of those who lean toward the historic Democratic Party would be uncomfortable admitting it.

@Blizzard of Oz:

Would you say Stalin wasn’t a communist because he ended up alienating factories from the workers, and fighting a nationalist war?

A lot of people, myself included, would call Stalin a state capitalist (I mean, he practiced enclosure, no?)

Since Saturday I’ve checked a variety of sites, from the crackpot right to the let’s sign a petition left, concerning the tragedy in Charlottesville. Now more than ever I think the situation in America right now can only end in bloodshed. When that concludes no one will win. The United States will be as broken as Rome at the end. And no one will mourn its passing.

You know, I, once upon a time meaning only just last year, thought history could be instructive, but I no longer believe that. History, at this point, is entirely irrelevant. Whether the Nazis were Socialists or not is completely & irrevocably moot. History, like God & Golf & Us & Much Else, is Dead. Realities are transplanting one after the other so rapidly now, that the history of twenty or thirty realities preceding the ephemeral current reality, is not only irrelevant but also only comprehendible by an exponentially diminishing few.

Prior to Hitler coming to power, that Nazi Party DID have a left wing–including the likes of Gregor Strasser and even Joseph Goebbles–and that left wing was indeed socialist. It wasn’t until Hitler keened to the fact that the easiest path to power was to get the industrialists, bankers and military behind him that he purged Strasser and Goebbles got the hint and changed his tune.

But all that history is irrelevant to what we mean when we use the term “socialism” today, which most people interpret as meaning modern, post-WW2 European style socialism, which has nothing whatsoever to do with Nazis other than the fact that their defeat helped bring it about.

The Nazis weren’t Socialists, they were ultimately Marauders. Effect is more important than words when it comes to what something is or isn’t. The words National Socialist are meaningless if, in effect, private property concentrated in the hands of a few Wealthy Elite is the rule. But let’s face it, The Nazis were Criminals. They were, collectively & individually, Criminally Insane. They confiscated, absconded, tortured & murdered & genocided their way to Power and ultimately destruction. Yes, that theft & murder was part of a Redistribution Scheme, but in no way did that Redistribution Scheme resemble a Socialist Redistribution Scheme in structure and/or sentiment.

Of course, this is all Intellectual Masturbation. The Freaks referred to as Nazis today haven’t the capacity to comprehend the intellectual parsing of this, so to perform a comprehensive deconstruction of it & them is tantamount to deconstructing a pile of dung to determine an uncertain future. Some people read the Tea Leaves and others read Dung Corn, I suppose. I’ll stick with the Tea Leaves, thank you very much. Tea Leaves are much easier on the olfactory & you can brew them and drink the resultant elixir once they’ve rendered their divination. Or, you can eat shit.

Metamar,

While Adolf indeed hated international finance capitalism, he was an enormous fan of privately held companies.

His platforms also advocated free enterprise as the only possible economic system, traditional roles for women, religion being at the center of moral life, rebuilding the military, hell, he was even anti-abortion and relaxed Weimar Germany’s strict gun ownership laws!

What’s not to like for a good cultural conservative!

From Ian’s link:

The resulting market concentration, the decrease of small businesses and the growth of monopolies and cartels in Nazi Germany are well documented. It’s no surprise that supermanagerial governance would go hand in hand with the consolidation of large industrial and financial interests, as the value it provides is enhanced when sectors and market power are concentrated. This is another interesting parallel between the Nazi era and our own. Today we find that antitrust and intellectual property laws have favored the concentration of market power in a handful of companies in key sectors such as pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, media and entertainment, not to mention the financial sector. And we find that unsurprisingly, today’s supermanagers thrive, in particular, in large, profitable firms.

Wall Street has slept with The Enemy so much, it is THE ENEMY, and many of you are sleeping with it if you have your Life Savings invested with it. I don’t, but of course, I have foregone the enticement of Life Savings and instead, I have chosen to Walk The Line. You should too. If enough do, maybe, just maybe, we could accomplish something positive and transformative.

The Empire of I.G. Farben

Farben was Hitler and Hitler was Farben. (Senator Homer T. Bone to Senate Committee on Military Affairs, June 4, 1943.)

On the eve of World War II the German chemical complex of I.G. Farben was the largest chemical manufacturing enterprise in the world, with extraordinary political and economic power and influence within the Hitlerian Nazi state. I. G. has been aptly described as “a state within a state.”

The Farben cartel dated from 1925, when organizing genius Hermann Schmitz (with Wall Street financial assistance) created the super-giant chemical enterprise out of six already giant German chemical companies — Badische Anilin, Bayer, Agfa, Hoechst, Weiler-ter-Meer, and Griesheim-Elektron. These companies were merged to become Inter-nationale Gesellschaft Farbenindustrie A.G. — or I.G. Farben for short. Twenty years later the same Hermann Schmitz was put on trial at Nuremburg for war crimes committed by the I. G. cartel. Other I. G. Farben directors were placed on trial but the American affiliates of I. G. Farben and the American directors of I. G. itself were quietly forgotten; the truth was buried in the archives.

It is these U.S. connections in Wall Street that concern us. Without the capital supplied by Wall Street, there would have been no I. G. Farben in the first place and almost certainly no Adolf Hitler and World War II.

German bankers on the Farben Aufsichsrat (the supervisory Board of Directors)1 in the late 1920s included the Hamburg banker Max War-burg, whose brother Paul Warburg was a founder of the Federal Reserve System in the United States. Not coincidentally, Paul Warburg was also on the board of American I. G., Farben’s wholly owned U.S. subsidiary. In addition to Max Warburg and Hermann Schmitz, the guiding hand in the creation of the Farben empire, the early Farben Vorstand included Carl Bosch, Fritz ter Meer, Kurt Oppenheim and George von Schnitzler.2 All except Max Warburg were charged as “war criminals” after World War II.

In 1928 the American holdings of I. G. Farben (i.e., the Bayer Company, General Aniline Works, Agfa Ansco, and Winthrop Chemical Company) were organized into a Swiss holding company, i. G. Chemic (Inter-nationale Gesellschaft fur Chemisehe Unternehmungen A. G.), controlled by I. G. Farben in Germany. In the following year these American firms merged to become American I. G. Chemical Corporation, later renamed General Aniline & Film. Hermann Schmitz, the organizer of I. G. Farben in 1925, became a prominent early Nazi and supporter of Hitler, as well as chairman of the Swiss I. G. Chemic and president of American I. G. The Farben complex both in Germany and the United States then developed into an integral part of the formation and operation of the Nazi state machine, the Wehrmacht and the S.S.

I. G. Farben is of peculiar interest in the formation of the Nazi state because Farben directors materially helped. Hitler and the Nazis to power in 1933. We have photographic evidence (see page 60) that I.G. Farben contributed 400,000 RM to Hitler’s political “slush fund.” It was this secret fund which financed the Nazi seizure of control in March 1933. Many years earlier Farben had obtained Wall Street funds for the 1925 cartelization and expansion in Germany and $30 million for American I. G. in 1929, and had Wall Street directors on the Farben board. It has to be noted that these funds were raised and directors appointed years before Hitler was promoted as the German dictator.

My quote:

Wall Street was, and is, Hitler and Hitler was, and is, Wall Street. (The Dishonorable Stephen Miller Band to The Ian Welsh Committee of Correspondence, August 15, 2017.)

Christ, you make the Nazis sound like any of the world governments currently in existence.

Think like a demagogue: promise everything – deliver nothing. The reason right wing socialism exists is to fool right wing people.

The political psychology underlying authoritarian demagoguery rests on the interaction of two kinds of “right wing people”: leaders and followers. The followers, stuck in subordinate and often precarious dependency in the social and economic hierarchy, have their political attitudes and expectations pre-prepared by fear and narrow horizons. The leaders — I am speaking particularly of those who assume a demagogue’s role — aspire to the privilege and power of an apex role in the social and economic hierarchy. They want to dominate socially and economically. And, they find out that appeals of certain form work well to persuade authoritarian followers, who are easily fooled when the forms are observed. Being amoral, the demagogue will say anything, and is thus free to exploit the effective rhetorical forms. If racism works (and it does), use it. Hypocrisy is a skill for the demagogue and the only consequence that matters is the achievement of power, status and wealth by the demagogue.

I expect Ian’s commentariat and readership fall into neither category. We are not amoral nor inclined toward demagoguery and by dint of education or temperament, we are mostly people of sufficient curiosity and awareness to be unsuited to uncritically adopt the attitudes of authoritarian followers in place of political understanding. Both demagogues and authoritarian followers are Other for us, though we may be closely acquainted thru family connections with the latter and, perhaps, by social acquaintance with sociopaths with some potential as demagogues.

We live in hierarchical economies, where there’s a lot of professional and technical as well as managerial call for domination for functional reasons. All domination is not demagoguery. Demagoguery only really works out-of-doors, out of the established hierarchy that functions to organize the routines of productive life. It might be used selectively as rhetoric, as when factory managers rail against union bosses or conservatives rail against corruption in government welfare programs.

Domination poses political problems. Who will guard the guardians? All power corrupts. Et Cetera. Demagoguery goes beyond that into a realm of dysfunction and degeneracy.

In the comments about, excerpting extensively from historical studies, there’s a lot about the relationship of the managerial and professional classes to the politics of the sociopathic demagogues.

In the interwar politics of Germany, both the petite bourgeoisie of small professionals (organized politically throughout the period in hostility to the legitimacy of the Weimar Republic for idiosyncratic reasons) and the moguls of cartelized industry played supporting roles in bringing the Nazi’s to power. This is of some historic interest.

In our politics, the relationship of both the C-class of top managers and financiers and the electorally much broader professional class of educated, credentialed people to the economically precarious and increasingly desperate “working” classes bears examination.

We who are neither demagogues nor authoritarian followers are free to deplore both, but I will submit that authoritarian followers are “right-wing people” only if no one contests political leadership with the demagogues, only if no one is willing to make sincere populist appeals.
And, oh yes, having made sincere populist appeals, the sincere populist must be able to form effective alliances with more “progressive” political groups to achieve and wield political power against the mega-rich and giant business corporations.

Before we get too carried away with parallels to the fascists of the 1930s, I will say that totalitarianism was a feature of this politics worth noting: mass mobilization of followers was a key factor. In our politics, mass demobilization would seem to play the corresponding structural role. Our demagogues appeal to overweight couch potatoes mostly.

And, in the 1930s, there was a living legacy of a vast array of elaborate political ideologies trying to make sense of erupting, emergent capitalism and the New Economy of the Second Industrial Revolution. A vast migration into cities was a recent memory or still underway, nightlife, radio, movies still novelties.

Now, we have the pablum of neoliberalism pretty much alone. “It’s complicated” and “There is no alternative” are its slogans. And, “markets”!

A comment I wrote here last year:

“It is important to define fascism. The term comes from the Latin word “fasces” a bundle of bound rods. The meaning is that there is strength in unity. While each rod is easily breakable by itself, the bound bundle is essentially unbreakable. In Roman times, fasces were carried by lictors before Roman magistrates and signified the power and authority (imperium) of the magistrate imparted to him by the inseparable union of the Senate and the Roman people (SPQR and all that). In 19th century Italy, the descendant word “fascio” was used to refer to any political grouping. In 1919, Mussolini formed his political party Fascii Italiani di Combattimento (Fighting Italian Political Groups) which adopted the Roman iconography and gave us, for better or worse, the term fascism. Mussolini’s fascism was an aggressive, anti-democratic, authoritarian form of Statism marked by the tripartite alliance of the state with corporate interests and acquiescent labor unions. These unions were not there to defend workers’ rights but to enforce discipline among them. The hallmarks of fascism were the one-party state, mobilization of the population, discipline, corporatism, exaggerated nationalism, militarism, surveillance, intolerance of dissent, suppression of individual liberties (at least those of ordinary citizens), and the embrace of state and state-sponsored violence to achieve these goals … In classic fascism, the guiding myth was the populo, the Volk, the People, not as individuals but as aggregate, mobilized to achieve a manifest destiny.”

Most of our political terminology has been so debased that it has lost all meaning. It is used now only to obfuscate and insult.

I did not realize that using the term Na*zi would throw a comment into moderation. Sort of difficult to have a discussion about it when it does.

OOOPS, my bad, wrong thread-abject apologies proffered.

Most of our political terminology has been so debased that it has lost all meaning. It is used now only to obfuscate and insult.

Excellent point…

Noam Chomsky sort of defines socialism in such a simple way even I can understand it. In “Chomsky on Lenin, Trotsky, Socialism & the Soviet Union” @ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQsceZ9skQI , starting at 4:20, he says, “the core of socialism was understood to be workers’ control of production”. By such definition, the Nazi economic regime was certainly not socialist.

However, I was motivated to make my prior post by the part of Ian’s post that says “Nazis were right-wingers, who believed in poor workers and rich capitalists “.

Well, my previous link says, “Wages increased by 10.9%” and “By 1938 unemployment was practically extinct.” Furthermore, I vaguely recalled, via TV documentary, that the Nazis sought to make workers’ life rather pleasant (untermensch and slave labor are obvious exceptions), guaranteeing vacations, facilitating the Volkswagon (for the volk), etc. This link has more info
http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/history/tch_wjec/germany19291947/2economicsocialpolicy2.shtml