Never Blame the Left (Were the Nazis Left or Right?)

National Review Via http://www.mega.nu:8080/ampp/genocide.html ^ | Dec., 1995 | George Watson

[Dr. Frank fan]

NAZI Germany neither owned the means of production nor distribution.

This, I conceded. However, if I am your government and I tell you that while you "own" your factory, equipment, or whatever, nevertheless I can and will tell you how and when and in what matter you may use the property you "own"....well, then, I think you get my point. It is socialism by the semantical trickery and tactical calculation of letting a few at the top (nominally) "own" things. In fact if you really think about it you'll realize that a factory owner under fascism is simply drafted into the government, just not in so many words. To say that this makes it The Opposite Of Socialism (which is what people who draw the Left-Right Political Axis implicitly do) is just bizarre. What it implies is that a Truly Socialist government could convert into a Non-Socialist, Fascist government overnight by moving a bunch of names around on paper (i.e. "You, the boss of this socialist factory - yes, you - you are no longer a government employee. You are a private citizen who runs this factory, starting now. Now, here are your orders: Carry on!").

What kind of basis is that on which to build a "political spectrum"? Ridiculous.

What about the whole "centralized government that often plans and controls the economy" part of the definition? Are you actually saying that this does not describe the Nazis, that the Nazis are far from this? Because, they are not.

I would also point out that the NAZIs did not seem interested in the "public welfare"

Au contraire. Everything they did, they did for the "public welfare" (as they defined it). Just ask them! They wanted to create a pan-German state, "living room" for their pure Aryan people, purify humanity of lesser races, etc. etc. etc. Why did they want to do all this? For the public good, naturally! (In their opinions.)

Perhaps this will help, socialism is a political ideology whereas fascism has no particular ideology.

That doesn't help. If "fascism" is "not an ideology" then just what are we talking about when we use the term "fascism"? This is nonsense. Fascism is as fascism does. Mussolini is the one who coined the term "fascism", as a form of a state (unified, regimented economy, militaristic) which he advocated. No matter how you slice it, that's an "ideology". Similarly, if the Nazis existed and did stuff according to loosely defined general principles which were more or less understood by the bulk of them, then whatever it was that they believed, that was their ideology. You can come along and say "aha! But, they have no particular ideology" (i.e. in the form of big fat books from the 19th century which they all read and discussed). But if so, then that is part of their ideology too.

Saying that a unified, coherent political organization which acts according to a predictable, reasonable well-defined set of beliefs "has no ideology" is nonsensical. It is like saying that a religion has no tenets. What did the Nazis believe? Well, for one they believed in a "master race". That, therefore, was one component of their ideology. Can you actually deny this?

The National Socialist German Worker's Party was perverted, by Hitler, Rohm and others, to fit their twisted views.

This I won't deny. Just as the Bolsheviks were perverted by Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin and others, to fit their twisted views.

This doesn't make them "not socialist". Does it? Because if it does, I can only conclude that there have never ever been any "socialist" in human history.

Doc, the only thing socialist about the NAZI was the word in their name.

Truth be told I think that's a pretty good reason, in and of itself, to say "case closed" and conclude they were socialist and call it a day. After all, that's what they called themselves! Who are we to believe, if not them? A young German joining the party would know he was joining a "socialist" party, because after all, it was part of the freakin' name!

I find it strange that so many people are willing to theorize and spout off about what the Nazis "really" were based on the most elaborate word-twisting and hair-splitting ("but they allowed nominal property 'ownership'! that makes them so much different than socialists!") while at the same time what they called themselves and how they thought of themselves is supposed to be discounted as if it is the most irrelevant thing in the world. No, it is not.

That being said, the word in the party name is far from the only reason to call them socialist. Do I really have to trot this out for you? I'm looking at the Nazi 25-point program, of course. Look at what they advocated:

-" the activities of the individual must not be allowed to clash with the interests of the community, but must take place within its confines and be for the good of all"

-"we demand the nationalization of all businesses which have been amalgamated (into trusts)."

-"we demand a land reform..." (hmmm, where have we heard that term?)

-"it is the duty of the state to help raise the standard of the nation's health..."

Answer honestly: are these "right-wing" ideas? How exactly do these ideas differ from that which is preached by socialists? Because from where I sit the difference is minimal.

Let me quote from [authority], "We define fascism as a hypernationalist, often pan-nationalist, anti-parliamentary, anti-liberal,"

So far he has just described the Soviet Union quite nicely. I guess USSR was "fascist" too.

anti-communist

Oh, ok. Score one for the professor. Granted: The Nazis vociferously used anti-communist rhetoric (while engaging in their form of socialism). And obviously, the socialists in the USSR didn't. Good, on this point (but not the others), the Nazis and Soviets were actually different. They had different rhetoric. Big huge difference, there.

populist and therefore anti-proletarian

This has no real meaning which I can discern. Why does being "populist" make them "therefore", anti-proletarian? I suspect the good professor is using Marxist buzzwords which make sense in his circle, but don't in mine. Sorry.

Both the Nazis and the Soviets were quite populist.

partly anti-capitalist and anti-bourgeois, anti-clerical or at least, non-clerical movement, with the aim of national social integration through a single party and corporative representation not always equally emphasised; with a distinctive style and rhetoric, it relied on activist cadres ready for violent action combined with electoral participation to gain power with totalitarian goals by a combination of legal and violent tactics"

Which also described both the Nazis and the Soviets. This is turning out to be a pretty empty definition....

"Hostility to the anti-national and anti-human solution that proletarian classism offers to solve the obvious probelms and injustices of the capitalist system".

Okay, what this definition boils down to: while the Bolsheviks were socialists who relied on class warfare, the Nazis were socialists who relied on nationalism.

Uh, didn't we already know this? Hasn't this already been said several dozen times on this thread?

More to the point: why are you denying it?

[Ditto]

Even if accurate, which I don't think it is, would that make them far right?

[Ditto]

The far left and the far right are the same, ultimately. Extreme left radicalz become extreme right dictatorz. Nazis were both. See 'Fascism,' by Gene Edward Veighth, Concordia Press.

So you are saying that the political spectrum as shown in post #98 and as taught in every high school civics class is meaningless? There is no such thing as far left and far right? Or is it that the Nazis are simply 180 degrees misplaced on that chart?

[muir_redwoods]

As will be and has already been pointed out, they called themselves National Socialists

Case closed. They are Leftist Socialists whose aim was to control society at the expense of the individual. They are no different from the Leftists operating today. Give today's Left unbridled power for ten years and you will be living in a camp.

[Big Banana]

Were they Left or Right? Is that a form of verbal masturbation? They were of course put in power by, an even more powerful group. Could this happen in America? Why not! Yes, I am LEFT handed with the RIGHT opinion.

[Ditto]

I think he [George Watson] used to write a lot for National Review, but he's getting older now and seems to have quietened down.

I have done some checking on Watson and found a book here wrote in 1998 called The Lost Liturature of Socialism I found the following review of it Here

Looks like it would be an interesting read.

 

The Lost Literature of Socialism
by George Watson
The Lutterworth Press • 1998 • 144 pages • $50.00 cloth; $30.00 paperback

Reviewed by Antony Flew

The literature of socialism is lost only in the sense of not having been read for a very long time. George Watson has been re-reading this literature as a professional literary critic, with strong interests in both political affairs and the history of ideas. Many of his findings are astonishing. Perhaps for readers today the most astonishing of all is that "In the European century that began in the 1840s, from Engels' article of 1849 down to the death of Hitler, everyone who advocated genocide called himself a socialist and no conservative, liberal, anarchist or independent did anything of the kind." (The term "genocide" in Watson's usage is not confined to the extermination only of races or of ethnic groups, but embraces also the liquidation of such other complete human categories as "enemies of the people" and "the Kulaks as a class.")

Although Watson himself unfortunately never defines the key word "socialism," he is apparently following throughout the usage of the old British Labour Party. From its foundation, it proclaimed itself a socialist party and stated its aim in Clause IV of its constitution thereafter printed on every membership card as being "the public ownership of all the means of production, distribution and exchange." Watson distinguishes three periods in the history of this socialist idea. The first, the Age of Conception, runs from the 1840s to the Bolshevik coup of 1917; the second, the Age of Fulfilment, continues until the Communist seizure of power in China in 1949; the third, the Age of Decline, continues until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

During the Age of Conception, many were attracted to socialism precisely because they already saw it as what Watson calls a "Tory project," a project necessarily involving rule by an irresponsible elite. Some of these elitists, such as the science fiction writer H.G. Wells and the dramatist Bernard Shaw, lived long enough into the Age of Fulfilment to welcome this aspect of the realization in the USSR of the socialist vision. Before World War I, other socialists, such as the novelist Jack London and the psychologist Havelock Ellis, saw socialism as leading both fortunately and necessarily to the triumph of the white races over the black and the brown.

For those of us born before World War II, the most interesting section of the book is that dealing with the intellectual relations between the teachings of Adolf Hitler and those of Marx and his professed followers among Hitler's contemporaries. In his autobiography, and in recorded conversations with intimates among his own followers, Hitler said such things as, "I have learned a great deal from Marxism, as I do not hesitate to admit," that "the whole of National Socialism is based on Marx," and that without racist commitments his own political movement "would really do nothing more than compete with Marxism on its own ground."

Hitler was not in these statements saying that he either was or ever had been a Marxist. From his first political activity, he had always been opposed to communism, but that was not because it was socialist, but because it was internationalist. Hitler, although born and raised in Austria, had always been a dedicated German nationalist.

Even those who are aware that Hitler's party was the National Socialist German Workers' Party have doubted the sincerity of its socialist professions. This is in part because Hitler, upon coming to power, refrained for tactical reasons from launching an immediate and extensive program of state takeovers of private industries, and in part because these skeptics have not enjoyed the benefits of Watson's re-readings of the lost literature of socialism.

His chapter on "Marx and the Holocaust" begins by telling us that Rudolf Hoess, commandant of the infamous Auschwitz death camp, recalled in his memoirs that even at the height of the Nazi-Soviet war of 1941-45, his colleagues had respected the socialist example of an exterminatory program based on forced labor. Watson then proceeds to deploy further evidence of Soviet influence on the Nazis and to cite other relevant passages from the works of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and other socialist luminaries, all presenting candidates for or possible methods of genocide. The connection between socialism and genocide could hardly be made any clearer.

From all this, Watson concludes that "it is becoming ever more probable that it was not just the idea of genocide that the Nazis owed to Marx and the Marxists, but its detailed practice too, not excluding camps and gas chambers. The shadow of the socialist idea grows longer and longer."

Antony Flew is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy, University of Reading, England.

There is also a review of it here at Amazon.com

[Mr. Buzzcut]

Excellent book by a brilliant man on this very topic ...

[Ditto]

If the two-dimensional chart were bent into a circle, it might be more useful.

Where would anarchy fall on that circle or a freemarket authoritarian government like Singapore?

[Ditto]

I don't know but to propose a continuum is to oversimplify...it lends itself to black/white us/them conclusions.

Not if we use agreed units of measure. There are rational ways to place various systems. I agree that there could be disputes over placment in the broad center, but at the extremes, it is quite clear, IMHO.

[KayEyeDoubleDee]

Noted.

[Leisler]

Sounds like any of the towns in Massachusetts. Also add to odd democrats are leftist who hate catholics, methodists who hate consevative christians, Puerto Ricans who hate blacks, blacks who hate whites-Puerto Ricans-Latins, farmers who hate big business, lesbians who hate men, and on and on and on. One big happy party.

[Leisler]

I live there, but like the marine who told his squad they were surrounded, "Shoot in anydirection boys!" So many unthinking dolts, it is easy. Since the party is so fractured, I just find out were a person is in the party then bring up all it's enemies. Subversion, subversion, subversion.

[Carry_Okie]

Socialism is the revenge of the incompetent (which is why it is vicious). It is the vain hope that, "because I am incompetent to make it in the market, I can use political power to coerce from the productive an income for myself." They then add a veneer of altruism to that little plan by saying, "and we'll take care of The Poor," or The Environment, or whatever the self-inflicted ruse happens to be today. Our self-satisfied leftist then goes and gets a safe government job doing just that.

The viciousness arises from that same self-hatred, that there is no propitiation or redemption for being one's incompetent self, and thus the demand for inflicting punishment upon the rest of humanity requires endless repetition to relieve the pain. This is of course only possible when government has the power to accommodate such sub-conscious desires, with the political pean to the democratic whim. All that remains is to collect these lemmings into an appropriate "interest group," that can be collectively manipulated into exercising the VERY profitable strategies of their sponsoring mentors.