Why Nazism Was Socialism and Why Socialism Is Totalitarian

[Bono]

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From The Mises Institute

[Bono]

Eh, you can't really compare Fascism and Socialism or Communism together.  In fascism, the means of production control the state, and in communism the state controls the means of production.

THis is not about Fascism, it's about Nazism.

[Bono]

Everyone with a different viewpoint to me is a Nazi LOL!!1111

Just becuase Nazis were Socialists doesn't mean all socialists are Nazis.
You're claiming something I never did.

[Bono]

Nazis were not socialists at all, very much the opposite.  They were really nothing very special - they were a right-wing nationalist party like all other right-wing nationalist parties (for example the GOP), whose purpose is to decieve the more gullible and hubris-prone portion of the working class into voting against their own interests out of hatred.

Strangely enough I agree with some of this.

Then you are both idiots.

[Bono]

I took it for granted that the Nazis, i.e., National Socialists, were of course a socialist party. But it was more "socialist" back in the 1920s, when it was populated with ex-German Army roughs and economic malcontents, oops, I mean, the German proletariat (a term Hitler used repeatedly), than it was in the 1930s.

The National Socialist Workers' Party never had chiefly working class support. In the 1930s a little over a third of its vote came from working class people, but then the same had been true of the Conservative and Liberal parties it displaced.

Sure Nazi economic politics were somewhat collectivist... but that's not making them socialist ... and to claim the opposite is not one bit intellectually honest. That's like claiming anything that is alive is therefore a human being.

^^^^
Pro-government intervention and collectivism does not equal socialism and pro-working class policy.  They did intervene in the economy, but only on behalf of the ruling aristocratic class.  You can not measure economic philosophy on terms of big government----small government, which would put two distinctly different ideologies, Fascism and Socialism together.

According to you, on both extremes there is high government intervention. Where is small government, then?

[Bono]

I took it for granted that the Nazis, i.e., National Socialists, were of course a socialist party. But it was more "socialist" back in the 1920s, when it was populated with ex-German Army roughs and economic malcontents, oops, I mean, the German proletariat (a term Hitler used repeatedly), than it was in the 1930s.

The National Socialist Workers' Party never had chiefly working class support. In the 1930s a little over a third of its vote came from working class people, but then the same had been true of the Conservative and Liberal parties it displaced.

Sure Nazi economic politics were somewhat collectivist... but that's not making them socialist ... and to claim the opposite is not one bit intellectually honest. That's like claiming anything that is alive is therefore a human being.

^^^^
Pro-government intervention and collectivism does not equal socialism and pro-working class policy.  They did intervene in the economy, but only on behalf of the ruling aristocratic class.  You can not measure economic philosophy on terms of big government----small government, which would put two distinctly different ideologies, Fascism and Socialism together.

According to you, on both extremes there is high government intervention. Where is small government, then?

Umm, no, that's not what I'm saying.  What I'm saying is that you have to measure it on two different dimensions.

That could be argued for much more dimensions. How about foreign policy? How about gun control? Where does it fit?
Point is, either you have an ndimensional chart where you emasure every little quirk on the ideology, or you have a simple one dimensional spectrum.

[Bono]

The National socialists were about as socialistic as the PRC is a republic.

Like the communists, the Nazis were very authoritarian.   Modern socialists are nations like Norway and Sweden.

That's social-democratic, not socialist, and Norway's socialism is overated anyways.

[Bono]

And clearly the Irish Republican Army and the Iraqi Republican National Guard are Republicans just like Bush.

A party name is not an ideology, adn if you had even read the post, you'd know this has nothing to do with the name, but with the policies.

[Bono]

Everyone with a different viewpoint to me is a Nazi LOL!!1111

While we're on the subject, Al, do the British people really pronounce Nazi Nah-zee' as opposed to Not'-see?

Is there any other way?

[Bono]

My view of the Nazi economic policy is pretty simple - they would do whatever they though was of benefit to the Nazi Party, which to them was pretty much the same thing as the nation. If they needed to force a business to do something, they would do it. If leaving a business alone to do what it did was beneficial, they'd do that. The policy was simply whatever it took to push the Nazi agenda and the Nazi war machine forward. Overall, their policies might be considered socialist, but they really didn't have a consistent economic theory or ideology that they ran on.

They didn't 'force' businesses to do anything - they simply contracted things out just like any other military-industrial complex.  Huge profits were made!  You are all enormously exaggerating the difference between Nazi Germany and the US.

The Us hasn't imposed price controls since Nixon, the last socialist president, was in power.

[Bono]

According to you, on both extremes there is high government intervention. Where is small government, then?

As an ideology? Off scale due to lack of coherence.
As a preferred means? All over the scale, just as what you call government intervention.

What matters, on a simple left-right scale, is how democratically decisions are made.

What do you mean lack of coherence.

[Bono]

My view of the Nazi economic policy is pretty simple - they would do whatever they though was of benefit to the Nazi Party, which to them was pretty much the same thing as the nation. If they needed to force a business to do something, they would do it. If leaving a business alone to do what it did was beneficial, they'd do that. The policy was simply whatever it took to push the Nazi agenda and the Nazi war machine forward. Overall, their policies might be considered socialist, but they really didn't have a consistent economic theory or ideology that they ran on.

Couldn't have said it better.

Unlike most (if not all) other political ideologies, economic policies were not a central part of Nazism. It was merely a useful tool to achieve their actual goals... which didn't have much to do with the economy (but with "race", "nation" etc.).

Of course, in their earlier days (around 1920) they had some of these economic proto-theories you could perhaps call "socialist". But such theories are also explainable with a non-economic approach, because many companies, banks etc. in the Weimar Republic were owned by Jews... or at least this is what the Nazis wanted to believe. As a result, there was a direct connection between their anti-Semitism and their "socialism".

Once the Nazis were in power, those theories didn't play much role anymore. In the few cases where Jews were indeed on the board of major companies, they were forced out. As far as the remaining "Aryan" businessmen were concerned... those were sometimes cuddled and sometimes tightly regulated by the Nazis, depending which helped their goals best.

And you have also to keep in mind that the Nazis were also strictly anti-labor union during the Weimar Republic, something you don't call "socialist" usually.

What about the price controls?
Or regulating supply and demand?

[Bono]

What about the price controls?
Or regulating supply and demand?

This depends on whether we're talking about price controls etc. as programmatic goals from the era of the Weimar Republic or as the actually implented policy once they were in power. The one thing didn't have much to do with the other thing sometimes.

In the first case, a possible explanation could be again anti-Semitism, because the "exploitation of the German worker through Jewish businessmen" had to be ended. In the second case, it could also be seen as measures to prepare the economy for war. Or they simply wanted to "buy" the support of the "common man" for their policies.

Hitler himself didn't have a clue about economy. And he didn't care about the economy. He simply didn't know what to do with it. So he left this matter to other government or party officials. He was pleased as long as everything went according to the plan and enough weapons were produced. This lead to the point where the economic policy of the Third Reich was the result of ideological fightings and rivalries between different groups within the party and the government.

In a rather, uh, "romantic" way, some Nazis saw the agriculture as the "natural and original form of life" for the Aryan man. As a result they tried everything to keep damage from the agricultural sector of the economy and had a suspicious eye on the other sectors, because they were seen as "unnatural" or "un-Aryan". Nazis who ran small businesses wanted to have small businesses totally unregulated and big business (which was controlled by the Jews anyway, according to them) heavily regulated etc.

So, the end policies were socialistic, regardless of ideological motivation behind them.
This is what I'm arguing.