If you believe the state should define the purpose of life and control the means by which that purpose is achieved, then you’re a totalitarian. If you believe it will happen all on its own as history inevitably works it out, then you’re a leftist. If you believe the state, led by a vanguard working on behalf of history or a new economic order or a new race of human beings, has to be the training wheels for the New Man, then you’re a fascist. If you want to control the state to enrich yourself and the members of your party, then you’re just a run of the mill mafia type who has found a better way to turn a buck than prostitution, loan sharking, gambling, unions, or drugs.
Thank you, Aruanan! I see what you’re saying about totalitarianism. Based on what you’re saying, it’s obvious the Nazis under Hitler saw themselves as a state based on a new race of human beings and a new world order. Did THEY consider themselves socialists, perhaps a vanguard to distribute the goods to those who fit the Master Race criteria? This would fit in with the current socialist view that the government should distribute the goodies, but that they should go to those with “correct thinking.”
Except that Leninism/Stalinism very specifically preached that "the state, led by a vanguard working on behalf of history or a new economic order" would bring about the millenium. They even drifted over at times into the theory that a "new Soviet man" would emerge, which bears considerable resemblance to the Nazi ideas of the "master race."
As I've pointed out on similar threads, discussions about whether Fascism/Nazism are "socialist" are meaningless until you first define what sets socialism apart from other ideologies. My experience has been that very few people are interested in tackling this challenge. Most would rather just pronounce that of course Nazis were socialists without first defining what the hell a socialist is.