Monday, November 19, 2012

Was Hitler a socialist?

It seems obvious that National Socialists ("National Socialist German Workers' Party") were...  socialists.

However, their modern socialist spawn squirm and huff when this simple fact is mentioned.

Historian Paul Johnson (*) sets things straight:

Hitler had no economic policy. But he had avery specific national policy. He wanted to rearm as fast as possible... There was no evidence whatever that Hitler was, even to the smallest degree, influenced by big business philosophy. He bowed to business advice only when convinced that taking it would forward his military and external aims. He regraded himself as a socialist and the essence of his socialism was that every individual or group in the state shold unhesitatingly work for national policy. So it did not matter who opened the actual factory so long as those managing it did what they were told. German socialism, he told Hermann Rauschning, was not about nationalization:
[Hitler:] 
"Our socialism reaches much deeper. It does not change the external order of things, it orders solely the relationship of man to the state... Then what does property and income count for? Why should we need to socialize the banks and the factories? We are socializing the people."

National Socialism was socialist.

One of the chief lies of the Left is that National Socialism was the opposite of communism. The truth is that Nazis and communists were enemies, not opposites. They fought for the same turf, like fratricidal twins.

Nazism might in fact have succeeded, from an economic standpoint, because the socialization of the people, without nationalization of industry, was a much more effective economic strategy. Bureaucrats are better employed to tell industry what to do, rather than to run industry. Some high level bureaucrats have never even run an lemonade stand.

Is National Socialism dead? It's worth asking whether China may pursue a National Socialist course in the decades to come. Perhaps communist regimes must become National Socialist, if they are to survive in the long run.

Where are we Americans in all of this? We are certainly not totalitarian, although there are currents of totalitarian thought in the American Left. If you doubt that, try putting an intelligent design book in your school library, or saying a prayer at your high school graduation, or telling the federal government that you have moral objections to buying contraception for your employees.

From an economic standpoint, note that our American descent to socialism bears a closer resemblance to the National Socialist variety than to the International Socialist variety, on which our President cut his teeth.

Our socialist leaders understand that we need not nationalize our industries to bring socialism to our country. We can yoke our producers to state purposes, while we socialize the people.

It's not a new strategy.

* Modern Times: the World from the Twenties to the Nineties. Kindle location 6420

32 comments:

  1. Of course the Nazis (National Socialists) were socialists, just as the Fabian Socialists and Social Democrats are socialists of a different flavor.

    What all socialists have in common is a yearning to have and be in a small, highly privileged nomenklatura; a deeply held belief in radical materialism and intellectual disdain for the laboring "masses", or lumpenproletariat (who are, by the way, disposable); and a desire to loot the national treasury to support their own privileged lifestyles.

    Much like you see in the White House today... an elite First couple who openly despises supposedly counterrevolutionary "bitter clingers", and celebrates a lifestyle that would embarrass a stump-toothed redneck who just hit the Powerball.

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    1. @George:

      Exactly. Well said.

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    2. Wy don't you, guys, move to Texas, secede, and build yourself a capitalist paradise? My worry is that if you stay in our "socialist" states, your mental health will get even worse than it already is.

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    3. The move is underway as we speak:

      "The 2011 state population estimates released earlier today by the Census Bureau show that the South has retained its dominant position in both population and growth over the last year... [T]he South was the recipient of 95% of the inter-regional net domestic migration (people moving from one state to another), with the West accounting for the other 5%, with the losses split between the Northeast and the Midwest."

      You can keep your "fixer-uppers" like Detroit, Trenton, and Scranton. Progressives seem to be quite happy in ramshackle poverty pits (the prototype is Havana, Progressive Gem of the Caribbean), busily redistributing the street lighting and police services back and forth between competing identity groups.

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    4. Don't let the door hit you on the way out.

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  2. I'd say I can't believe I have to explain this, but then again this is Michael Egnor's blog: if you get in power and don't pursue socialist policies, then you aren't a socialist. "Socializing the people" is simply totalitarianism, which can be practiced by the left or the right.

    On the other hand, it's both fascinating and kind of hilarious to watch the egnorant wing of the Republican party continue to struggle against reality even after getting rather firmly whacked by it.

    Boo

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    1. Kraft duerch Freude was certainly socialist.

      Ben

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    2. "Socializing the people", eh? Nice made-up concept, Boo! For a ninth-grader, that is.

      Totalitarianism is "absolute control by the state or a governing branch of a highly centralized institution." Totalitarians don't give a f**k whether you're "socialized" ("made fit for life in companionship with others") or not.

      I have a feeling you've bottomed out on your logic stack.

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    3. Try reading the original post Mr. Boggs. There's a reason I put it in quotation remarks. It wasn't my concept.

      I have a feeling you've bottomed out on your reading comprehension stack.

      Boo

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    4. Ben- which industries did Kraft duerch Freude nationalize?

      Boo

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    5. Thanks for clearing that up, Boo. Folks who quote ninth graders are usually fourth graders. You got any received wisdom from Justin Bieber you'd like to share?

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    6. George, you made a mistake. It's okay. It happens. Doubling down on it just makes you look more ridiculous. Again, try actually reading the post up there. The "socializing the people" quote was from Hitler. The post is about Hitler. And since it was written by Michael Egnor, you've just declared Michael Egnor to be a fourth grader. Is that what you meant to do?

      You're in a hole George. Stop digging.

      Boo

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  3. It seems obvious that National Socialists ("National Socialist German Workers' Party") were... socialists.


    Right, because what a group calls itself is always an accurate description.

    Keep on churning out the lies, Egnor, they're very amusing.

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  4. Get your definitions straight! You're confusing 'socialism' with 'Marxism'. The opposite of 'socialism' isn't 'capitalism', it's 'individualism' (according to Sebastian Haffner, the German historian of the Third Reich and writer).

    Hitler wasn't a Marxist. He didn't nationalize the banks. But he was a socialist, because he set out to submerge the individual in the state. Social groups, even cycling clubs, were taken over by NSAP members. Children were put in the Hitler Youth or the Bund deutscher Maedchen. People were made to go to marches and rallies.

    Are American liberals socialists? I doubt it. From the outside, Americans seem just as individualistic as they always have been. They mightn't be libertarian, in wanting a larger government with more regulation, but in a modern state, it's impossible not to have at least some central regulation.

    I doubt that China will become 'National Socialist' (however that's defined). China used to be Marxist and totalitarian. Now it's capitalist and authoritarian. It may stay the same, or eventually evolve to capitalist and democratic.

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    1. Personality cults are another common thread among socialist governments. Here's a group of young folks, Johann's "individualistic liberals", celebrating their individuality and being (re)educated into the personality cult...

      www.youtube.com/watch?v=7x-wpc2TpoM

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  5. For liberals, it makes perfect sense that Hitler might have called himself a socialist, even though he wasn't, just to curry favor with the masses and consolidate power. It never occurs to them, however, that he might have done the same thing with Christianity.

    I have a feeling that if Nazis had called themselves National Christianists rather than National Socialists, the name might mean something to people on the Left. But because they don't want Hitler on their socialist team, the NSDAP is just a name, nothing more.

    Nazism was a cult of state power. There are others with other names and defining characteristics. I don't like any of them.

    JQ

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  6. It finally dawns on some conservatives that calling Sandra Fluke a slut wasn't such a great idea after all. The Nasty GOP.

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    1. Sandra Fluke called Sandra Fluke a slut. She publicly demanded industrial quantities of contraception for her personal use. I just report the news.

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    2. Yeah, right. Keep digging.

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    3. Meanwhile, Allen West concedes, while Marco Rubio dithers about the age of the Earth.

      The GOP marches on.

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    4. Right. Obama's presidency is a 4 year period of catastrophic failure, the economy is tanking, the debt is $16 trillion, unemployment is at near-depression levels, and the Middle East is about to erupt into total war that threatens the existence of 6 million Jews and is already killing thousands and thousands of innocents in the Muslim world, but what really matters is what Marco Rubio thinks about cosmology.

      After all, if Rubio is elected President in 2016, we have to worry about all those new cosmology laws that he'll pass.

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    5. Rubio's pandering to the young-earth crowd is just icing on the cake. The main dish these days is the civil war within the GOP. Couldn't happen to a nicer bunch.

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    6. Right. Rubio shouldn't pander.

      He should be above it all, like Obama, and pass out free cellphones and condoms.

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    7. The economy has turned the corner, unemployment is dropping, most of the debt was incurred before Obama took office, and maybe you haven't noticed but the Middle East has been erupting in war for rather a long while.

      Come outside the bubble. I promise you it's not as scary out here as you think.

      Boo

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    8. @Boo:

      Whew! I am relieved. I thought we were facing serious problems that had gotten worse lately.

      Now that things are fine, how do I sign up to get free Obamaphones and condoms?

      It's fun outside of the "bubble"!

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    9. "most of the debt was incurred before Obama took office'

      Right. When Obama took office, the debt was $10 trillion. Now it's $16 trillion. So from 1776 to 2008 (232 years), the cumulative debt was $10 trillion. Obama increased it by 60% in 4 years.

      Why don't I feel reassured.

      "The economy has turned the corner"

      Huh? This is one of the worst "recoveries" from a recession in American history. Unemployment would be near 20% if we included the people who simply quit looking for work.

      "maybe you haven't noticed but the Middle East has been erupting in war for rather a long while."

      Ho hum. A radical Muslim takeover sweeping the Middle East, and encirclement of Israel by genocidally anti-semitic psychos with massive armament and soon to have nuclear weapons.

      Tell me, what exactly would a failed Obama policy in the Middle East look like?

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    10. Move to Texas and secede. I'm sure that will make you will feel safer.

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    11. Michael,

      The recovery from the GFC isn't the worst in America's history. The recovery from the Great Depression was slower, and for similar reasons. Both were or are fiscal crises. In both, banks and other lending institutions failed or were unwilling to lend money. Which meant producers didn't have money to invest and consumers didn't have money to spend.

      Recovery from the Great Depression only occurred with the stimulus of the military spending for the Second World War (are you proposing that America should invade Iran - the source of Hamas' rockets - to stimulate the economy?)

      Increasing public debt to stimulate the economy is sensible. David Cameron in Britain in 2010 attempted to do the opposite by cutting public spending and public debt (which Romney was proposing), and achieved the opposite with a double dip recession and a worsening of public debt (as more unemployment benefits were paid and less tax was generated).

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    12. The anemic recovery in the Great Depression and in our Great Recession share this in common: they are led by far-left presidents using socialist Keynesian schemes.

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    13. Michael,

      Obama isn't a far left politician (unless you regard Ghenhis Khan as a democratic leader - which, considering your bizarre assertions - doesn't seem implausible).

      David Cameron is a conservative politician who attempted to use fiscal austerity to treat a fiscal crisis (as Romney was proposing to do) and actually managed to make the situation worse, with a double dip recession and worsening public debt.

      I hope your surgical skills are as good as your ability to make unwarranted assertions.

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    14. I didn't say we don't have problems, just that they're not as bad as you want them to be and blaming Obama is nonsensical. The recovery isn't as good as anyone wants it to be, but it is happening. And if you're going to bring up the Great Depression, recall that Herbert Hoover was president until 1932, and things kept getting worse on his watch. Also, you seem to have forgotten the premise of your post. Germany's economy recovered from the Great Depression faster than ours did. So does socialism work, or was Hitler not a socialist?

      And again, maybe you are unaware of this, but ever since its rebirth Israel has been surrounded by enemies who wish its destruction. And their current conflict just might possibly have something to do with the fact that Gaza is essentially a large open air prison.

      Boo

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  7. "One of the chief lies of the Left is that National Socialism was the opposite of communism. The truth is that Nazis and communists were enemies, not opposites. They fought for the same turf, like fratricidal twins."

    Exactly. The Nazis and the Communists in Weimar Germany were fighting each other for market-share: their emnity was founded on the fact that both movments were target the same audience of potential converts.

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