Socialism = NAZI (Hitler was a socialist)

A Veritas News Service Book Review - "A magnificent work... it should be required reading for all Americans. This book reveals socialisms nasty little secret." William Cooper

The Nazis were not a tribe of prehistoric savages. Their crimes were the official, legal acts and policies of modern Germany -- an educated, industrialized, CIVILIZED Western European nation, a nation renowned throughout the world for the luster of its intellectual and cultural achievements. By reason of its long line of famous artists and thinkers, Germany has been called "the land of poets and philosophers."

But its education offered the country no protection against the Sergeant Molls in its ranks. The German university students were among the earliest groups to back Hitler. The intellectuals were among his regime's most ardent supporters. Professors with distinguished academic credentials, eager to pronounce their benediction on the Fuhrer's cause, put their scholarship to work full time; they turned out a library of admiring volumes, adorned with obscure allusions and learned references.

The Nazis did not gain power against the country's wishes. In this respect there was no gulf between the intellectuals and the people. The Nazi party was elected to office by the freely cast ballots of millions of German voters, including men on every social, economic, and educational level. In the national election of July 1932, the Nazis obtained 37% of the vote and a plurality of seats in the Reichstag. On January 30, 1933, in full accordance with the country's legal and constitutional principles, Hitler was appointed Chancellor. Five weeks later, in the last (and semi-free) election of the pre-totalitarian period, the Nazis obtained 17 million votes, 44% of the total.

The voters were aware of the Nazi ideology. Nazi literature, including statements of the Nazi plans for the future, papered the country during the last years of the Weimar Republic. "Mein Kampf" alone sold more than 200,000 copies between 1925 and 1932. The essence of the political system which Hitler intended to establish in Germany was clear.

In 1933, when Hitler did establish the system he had promised, he did not find it necessary to forbid foreign travel. Until World War II, those Germans who wished to flee the country could do so. The overwhelming majority did not. They were satisfied to remain.

The system which Hitler established -- the social reality which so many Germans were so eager to embrace or so willing to endure -- the politics which began in a theory and ended in Auschwitz -- was: the "total state". The term, from which the adjective "totalitarian" derives, was coined by Hitler's mentor, Mussolini.

The state must have absolute power over every man and over every sphere of human activity, the Nazis declared. "The authority of the Fuhrer is not limited by checks and controls, by special autonomous bodies or individual rights, but it is free and independent, all-inclusive and unlimited," said Ernst Huber, an official party spokesman, in 1933.

"The concept of personal liberties of the individual as opposed to the authority of the state had to disappear; it is not to be reconciled with the principle of the nationalistic Reich," said Huber to a country which listened, and nodded. "There are no personal liberties of the individual which fall outside of the realm of the state and which must be respected by the state... The constitution of the nationalistic Reich is therefore not based upon a system of inborn and inalienable rights of the individual."

If the term "statism" designates concentration of power in the state at the expense of individual liberty, then Nazism in politics was a form of statism. In principle, it did not represent a new approach to government; it was a continuation of the political absolutism -- the absolute monarchies, the oligarchies, the theocracies, the random tyrannies -- which has characterized most of human history.

In degree, however, the total state does differ from its predecessors: it represents statism pressed to its limits, in theory and in practice, devouring the last remnants of the individual. Although previous dictators (and many today; e.g., in Latin America) often preached the unlimited power of the state, they were on the whole unable to enforce such power. As a rule, citizens of such countries had a kind of partial "freedom", not a freedom-on-principle, but at least a freedom-by-default.

Even the latter was effectively absent in Nazi Germany. The efficiency of the government in dominating its subjects, the all-encompassing character of its coercion, the complete mass regimentation on a scale involving millions of men -- and, one might add, the enormity of the slaughter, the planned, systematic mass slaughter, in peacetime, initiated by a government against its own citizens -- these are the insignia of twentieth-century totalitarianism (Nazi AND communist), which are without parallel in recorded history. In the totalitarian regimes, as the Germans found out after only a few months of Hitler's rule, every detail of life is prescribed, or proscribed. There is no longer any distinction between private matters and public matters. "There are to be no more private Germans," said Friedrich Sieburg, a Nazi writer; "each is to attain significance only by his service to the state, and to find complete self-fulfillment in his service." "The only person who is still a private individual in Germany," boasted Robert Ley, a member of the Nazi hierarchy, after several years of Nazi rule, "is somebody who is asleep."

In place of the despised "private individuals," the Germans heard daily or hourly about a different kind of entity, a supreme entity, whose will, it was said, is what determines the course and actions of the state: the nation, the whole, the GROUP. Over and over, the Germans heard the idea that underlies the advocacy of omnipotent government, the idea that totalitarians of every kind stress as the justification of their total states: COLLECTIVISM.

Collectivism is the theory that the group (the collective) has primacy over the individual. Collectivism holds that, in human affairs, the collective -- society, the community, the nation, the proletariat, the race, etc. -- is THE UNIT OF REALITY AND THE STANDARD OF VALUE. On this view, the individual has reality only as part of the group, and value only insofar as he serves it; on his own he has no political rights; he is to be sacrificed for the group whenever it -- or its representative, the state -- deems this desirable.

...the necessity, for which the older doctrines make little allowance, of sacrifice, even up to the total immolation of individuals, on behalf of society... For Liberalism (i.e., individualism), the individual is the end and society the means; nor is it conceivable that the individual, considered in the dignity of an ultimate finality, be lowered to mere instrumentality. For Fascism, society is the end, individuals the means, and its whole life consists in using individuals as instruments for its social ends.

"The higher interests involved in the life of the whole," said Hitler in a 1933 speech, "must here set the limits and lay down the duties of the interests of the individual." Men, echoed the Nazis, have to "realize that the State is more important than the individual, that individuals must be willing and ready to sacrifice themselves for Nation and Fuhrer." The people, said the Nazis, "form a true organism," a "living unity", whose cells are individual persons. In reality, therefore -- appearances to the contrary notwithstanding -- there is no such thing as an "isolated individual" or an autonomous man.

Just as the individual is to be regarded merely as a fragment of the group, the Nazis said, so his possessions are to be regarded as a fragment of the group's wealth.

"Private property" as conceived under the liberalistic economy order was a reversal of the true concept of property [wrote Huber]. This "private property" represented the right of the individual to manage and to speculate with inherited or acquired property as he pleased, without regard for the general interests... German socialism had to overcome this "private", that is, unrestrained and irresponsible view of property. All property is common property. The owner is bound by the people and the Reich to the responsible management of his goods. His legal position is only justified when he satisfies this responsibility to the community.

Contrary to the Marxists, the Nazis did not advocate public ownership of the means of production. They did demand that the government oversee and run the nation's economy. The issue of legal ownership, they explained, is secondary; what counts is the issue of CONTROL. Private citizens, therefore, may continue to hold titles to property -- so long as the state reserves to itself the unqualified right to regulate the use of their property.

If "ownership" means the right to determine the use and disposal of material goods, then Nazism endowed the state with every real prerogative of ownership. What the individual retained was merely a formal deed, a content-less deed, which conferred no rights on its holder. Under communism, there is collective ownership of property DEJURE. Under Nazism, there is the same collective ownership DE FACTO.

During the Hitler years -- in order to finance the party's programs, including the war expenditures -- every social group in Germany was mercilessly exploited and drained. White-collar salaries and the earnings of small businessmen were deliberately held down by government controls, freezes, taxes. Big business was bled by taxes and "special contributions" of every kind, and strangled by the bureaucracy. At the same time the income of the farmers was held down, and there was a desperate flight to the cities -- where the middle class, especially the small tradesmen, were soon in desperate straits, and where the workers were forced to labor at low wages for increasingly longer hours (up to 60 or more per week).

But the Nazis defended their policies, and the country did not rebel; it accepted the Nazi argument. Selfish individuals may be unhappy, the Nazis said, but what we have established in Germany is the ideal system, SOCIALISM. In its Nazi usage this term is not restricted to a theory of economics; it is to be understood in a fundamental sense. "Socialism" for the Nazis denotes the principle of collectivism as such and its corollary, statism -- in every field of human action, including but not limited to economics.

"To be a socialist", says Goebbels, "is to submit the I to the thou; socialism is sacrificing the individual to the whole."

By this definition, the Nazis practiced what they preached. They practiced it at home and then abroad. No one can claim that they did not sacrifice enough individuals.

Excerpted from Chapter 1 of THE OMINOUS PARALLELS, by Leonard Peikoff... most probably the most important book written in modern times. Buy it... read it... study it.

I don't believe that using Stalin as an example of a good Socialist is very accurate or fair. The man was a racist psychopath. He was transporting the USSR's Jews to the Gulags when he died. Lenin and Trotsky didn't have his pathological hatred for Jews, or for the other ethnic groups he persecuted.

Hitler wasn't a Socialist. However, he used some of the ideas of Socialism, like collectivism and statism, in order to advance his nationalistic schemes. Hitler's ambition was for the Aryan race to become all powerful and for other races, like the Jews, Slavs etc to be enslaved. That's why the NAZI party described itself as 'National Socialist'. It used a perverted form of Socialism, one that only benefited the Aryan Germans (the untermenschen were just the slave labour and fertiliser), for the benefit of German nationalism. Don't confuse the NAZI party's slippery use of the term Socialism, with real Socialism.

To summarise, Orthodox Socialism is egalitarian and anti-nationalist, unfortunately, it also requires collectivism and statism. Hitler accepted the last two, but rejected the first two, in favour of racism and nationalism. The USSR claimed to accept all four, but actually was also a racist cesspool. The USSR was not a proper Socialist country, nor is the PRC one. I doubt that there will ever be a proper Socialist society.

A lefties shooting a man with opposing views, after all the politicians brainwashed people Fortuyn was evil, is that free speech too?

Did the Socialist Party order him to assassinate the politician?

Also very interesting is that the PvdA refuses to leave the offices they are required to leave. The LPF is entitled to that office space. But those democratic socialists won't leave, trying to fence off the LPF from being an effective party.

When does their term of office expire?

Did I mention they still are using the national tv to cause as much damage to the LPF as they possibly can?

And American politicans do not use public funded resources to attack their opponents.

Right...and I have a bridge I would like to sell you...

PS Knowingly spreading lies is slander, not free speech.

Political campaign rhetoric as slander. Oh, that is too much. You really don't know a lot about politics.

Nazism was, as the name implies, a synthesis of nationalism, socialism and racialism. It didn't fit the standard pigeonholes of that time or of ours. Nazism became associated with the right because of Hitler's fight against the Communists and the rightwing support it brought him. International Communism being "left" the tendency was to put national socialism on the "right." But it would be hard to conceive of Nazism had there been no Bolshevik revolution.

The truth is that there are characteristics that link Nazism to the left and to the right, and the mixture can't quite be characterized as either. Part of the problem is also that since Hitler and Stalin, both the right and the left want to appear less amenable to state control and domination of industry and society than they were in the Europe of Hitler's day. Similarly, one would find racial and eugenic ideas much more popular across the Western political spectrum in 1932 than in 2002.

More interesting would be a discussion of Peikoff. Randian individualist by trade and conviction, yet he does manage to be very collectivist about things that concern him deeply, like the Middle East. Don't Randianism and other extreme forms of libertarianism tend to break down in this way when issues of real concern to people are addressed?

George Watson, a professor at Cambridge University, has traced the racial and eugenic ideas of the Fabians and other socialists. It's the fashion today to ascribe racialist ideas solely to the right. In fact, in the days of Marx, Shaw, Wells and the Webbs, you would find such ideas among socialist elites as well. Not a pretty chapter of their history, but not something one can or should ignore. That doesn't mean that we put racism on the left, rather than the right, just that the idea was associated more with the age, rather than with leftism or rightism.

The argument that Nazism was inegalitarian, and therefore on the right, is also something that doesn't stand greater scrutiny. Among Germans, there was a feeling that they had never been so equal as they were under Hitler. There were similar feelings in France and Russia during the revolutions. Revolutionary leftism may make professions of universal equality, but the practice is passionate opposition to some external or internal enemy. This common cause creates subjective feelings of equality, which may or may not be true. In general, money and wealth are taken out of the calculation, but differences in power remain and may even increase. There are similarities in this regard between Nazism and revolutionary leftist regimes.

The distinction would be that the Nazism aimed at creating a permanent slave class, rather than exploiting a temporary one. Fair enough, I suppose, but this wasn't true of all those who supported Hitler, and looks more like a technical or theoretical difference than a real one.

I don't believe that Nazism can be simply and baldly described as left-wing socialism. The Nazis courted the traditionalist, nationalist and anti-communist right too much for such a label to apply. But the self-characterizations of leftists and socialists often don't hold water.

I don't believe that using Stalin as an example of a good Socialist is very accurate or fair.

No, he is an example of a bad socialist.

The man was a racist psychopath.

True. He was also a socialist. You think they are mutually exclusive or something? Why?

Socialists can only be nice wonderful beautiful people, right?

Lenin and Trotsky didn't have his pathological hatred for Jews, or for the other ethnic groups he persecuted.

No, those two psychos had pathological hatred for groups of people based on slightly different criteria.

Hitler wasn't a Socialist. However, he used some of the ideas of Socialism, like collectivism and statism,

He "wasn't a socialist", he just acted like one. Got it.

I don't know why this is supposed to be an important distinction.

That's why the NAZI party described itself as 'National Socialist'. It used a perverted form of Socialism, one that only benefited the Aryan Germans

Agreed! Whereas, similarly, the Bolsheviks in USSR used their own (also perverted) form of socialism, one that only benefitted... well... them, really.

What's your point?

Don't confuse the NAZI party's slippery use of the term Socialism, with real Socialism.

What is "real Socialism"? Is that the same thing as the utopian imaginary socialism of the other guy arguing with me? Let me guess... if it's bad, it's not socialism. If a guy says he is socialist, advocates socialist things, has socialist supporters, and rises to power, we're allowed to call him a socialist. But the moment he does something bad he's no longer "really" a socialist. Do I have that about right?

To summarise, Orthodox Socialism is egalitarian and anti-nationalist

Very well. Then no nation has ever been "Orthodox Socialist", which makes it a pretty useless definition for our purposes. Like other arguers, you insist that Hitler "wasn't really a socialist", but apparently the only way you can get away with doing this is by defining "socialism" so narrowly that no human being in any government is or could even conceivably be socialist!

You're right: if socialism is defined so purely that no one's "really" a socialist, then neither was Hitler. But what exactly do you think you're proving? I mean, in a similar way, if you define the word "fruit" narrowly enough then apples aren't "really" fruits, either. But what does this have to do with reality, in particular, the necessary and useful exercise of drawing comparisons between two sets of ideas (in this case "Bolshevism" and "Nazism") and deciding whether they are more similar than different?

Is this anything other than a stubborn word game?

The USSR claimed to accept all four, but actually was also a racist cesspool. The USSR was not a proper Socialist country, nor is the PRC one. I doubt that there will ever be a proper Socialist society.

Right - you're admitting my above point that your entire argument rests on defining "socialist" so narrowly that it will never actually be found in the real world.

So you will understand my posts, and the original article, then, if you globally replace the word "socialist" by the phrase "like the USSR, China, and Cuba". Whatever kind of "ist" Hitler was, it not much different an "ism" than whatever kind of "ism" you will allow us to say that USSR, China, and Cuba is or was. If those countries were/are "foo-ist", then Hitler was also very close to being a foo-ist, and certainly not an anti-foo-ist and not on the "opposite side of the spectrum" from foo-ism at all, as the self-proclaimed foo-ists often like to claim.

You see, that was the actual point of the article, and of my posts, your (and others') annoyingly purist word games notwithstanding.

Hitler wasn't a Socialist. However, he used some of the ideas of Socialism, like collectivism and statism,

He "wasn't a socialist", he just acted like one. Got it.

The problem is that all totalitarian oligarchies use these methods to some degree. Totalitarinism and statism obviously go together, when a government has a war to prepare for then collectivism will surely follow. This allows the government to spend more on the military. Just because NAZI Germany used these methods too doesn't mean that their underlying politics was the same as the USSR's or China's.

Agreed! Whereas, similarly, the Bolsheviks in USSR used their own (also perverted) form of socialism, one that only benefitted... well... them, really.

That's precisely the point, Socialism is supposed to benefit the whole population, not just one group.

Is that the same thing as the utopian imaginary socialism of the other guy arguing with me?

No, actually I am a libertarian Republican! I don't like the way Socialism relies entirely on the government, its fundamentally flawed.

If a guy says he is socialist, advocates socialist things, has socialist supporters, and rises to power, we're allowed to call him a socialist...

Hitler also had powerful capitalist supporters like Henry Ford and he was supported by other large corporations. If he were really a Socialist would these people have backed him? They certainly didn't back the USSR.

Right - you're admitting my above point that your entire argument rests on defining "socialist" so narrowly that it will never actually be found in the real world.

The brand of Socialism I am describing was that which was sought in Britain since the end of WW II. George Orwell was its main advocate. He also wanted it to go hand in hand with a democratic political system.

Whatever kind of "ist" Hitler was, it not much different an "ism" than whatever kind of "ism" you will allow us to say that USSR, China, and Cuba is or was.

Yes, the thing they had in common was totalitarianism, not Socialism. Hitler certainly didn't have leftism in common with the others, as many Republicans want to believe.

"Don't Randianism and other extreme forms of libertarianism tend to break down in this way when issues of real concern to people are addressed?"

I am not sure what you mean.To me Rand was only one writer among many.On the issue of real concern to people; I think the market does a better job than government and freedom is good for all.

"Nazism was, as the name implies, a synthesis of nationalism, socialism and racialism. It didn't fit the standard pigeonholes of that time or of ours. Nazism became associated with the right because of Hitler's fight against the Communists and the rightwing support it brought him. International Communism being "left" the tendency was to put national socialism on the "right." But it would be hard to conceive of Nazism had there been no Bolshevik revolution. "

Yes it was a synthesis but I think the ideas were fodder for power.I do not think they were really the opposite of the communists on the issue of nationalism since both sides agreed on competeing for world domination.The nationalism of the nazis was really the creation of a "new world order" under their thumb.The national socialism of Germany would be the world itself.

"Only someone without any knowledge of political philosophy could make such a claim."

Thanks a logical argument their.

"The Nazis lay on the far right of the traditional political spectrum,"

Perhaps the traditional spectrum is misleading especially if they only include socialists.How pray tell did the nazis raise the traditional institutions of the dominant culture to a level of worship when you arrest and imprison the people running them.

"On the contrary, socialism lay at the far left of the traditional spectrum, where the traditional institutions of the dominant culture are intentionally weakened in an effort to strike against institutionalized racism and sexism"

I think you are talking policy differences not General principles.They both believe in the subordination of the individual to the state.Whether you call it the proletariat the nation the state the german people it is still collectivism.Perhaps some defintions are in order

Main Entry: Na·zism Pronunciation: 'nät-"si-z&m, 'nat- Variant(s): or Na·zi·ism /-sE-"i-z&m/ Function: noun Etymology: Nazi + -ism Date: 1934 : the body of political and economic doctrines held and put into effect by the National Socialist German Workers' party in the Third German Reich including the totalitarian principle of government, state control of all industry, predominance of groups assumed to be racially superior, and supremacy of the führer.

Main Entry: fas·cism Pronunciation: 'fa-"shi-z&m also 'fa-"si- Function: noun Etymology: Italian fascismo, from fascio bundle, fasces, group, from Latin fascis bundle & fasces fasces Date: 1921 1 often capitalized : a political philosophy, movement, or regime (as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition 2 : a tendency toward or actual exercise of strong autocratic or dictatorial control

Main Entry: so·cial·ism Pronunciation: 'sO-sh&-"li-z&m Function: noun Date: 1837 1 : any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods 2 a : a system of society or group living in which there is no private property b : a system or condition of society in which the means of production are owned and controlled by the state 3 : a stage of society in Marxist theory transitional between capitalism and communism and distinguished by unequal distribution of goods and pay according to work done

Main Entry: col·lec·tiv·ism Pronunciation: k&-'lek-ti-"vi-z&m Function: noun Date: 1857 : a political or economic theory advocating collective control especially over production and distribution; also : a system marked by such control

They are competing gangs for control of the state with minor policy differences.If theses political ideas were opposites one be for and one against control.

So Stalin isn't really a socialist?But of course socialists would persecute business people, steal their propety put them in gulags etc.That is Socialism.

"Hitler wasn't a Socialist. However, he used some of the ideas of Socialism, like collectivism and statism"

That is what a socialist is; collectivism and statism.The minor policy differences hardly makes them opposite.Coke and Pepsi are different brands but they are still colas.

"To summarise, Orthodox Socialism is egalitarian and anti-nationalist, unfortunately, it also requires collectivism and statism. Hitler accepted the last two, but rejected the first two, in favour of racism and nationalism. The USSR claimed to accept all four, but actually was also a racist cesspool. The USSR was not a proper Socialist country, nor is the PRC one. I doubt that there will ever be a proper Socialist society."

That is because the theory of socialism in all it's variants is wrong.If the theory doesn't work it is badly flawed.

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