Replies

To Stryker:
The Nazis were not socialists despite their name. I have rebutted this nonsense so many times on FR I am sick of it.

Perhaps you need to take a step back to see why your argument continually fails.

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

So swathes of objective analysis must fall to your brilliance? Peikoff, von Mises, Hayek? Even Hitler his bad-self spent much time explaining his socialism.

The Nazis lay on the far right of the traditional political spectrum...

Your using a popular (mis)conception of their political position to justify your argument. Nothing inherently wrong there. But others here are merely arguing for the chance to change that popular (mis)conception.

Despite their National Socialist rubric, they failed to nationalize a single major industry, but rather nationalized the labor force itself, which socialists would hardly do.

I think your argument fails in at least two ways. What 'Socialists would do' could mean one of two things: either they adhere to the "true" socialist model or they adhere to the practical socialist model. "True" socialists argue in the theoretical abstract, because they claim "that socialism has never been tried". That is, all the socialistic experiments (and failures) to date, all the death and destruction wrought in the name of socialism, are meaningless, because the practitioners were faulty (i.e., human). I don't think most people are willing to give the socialists a bye on this. To claim that the Nazis weren't "true" socialists is a meaningless argument, because no regime to date has been "true".

In practical terms, socialism has meant government control, or totalitarianism, in the name of the Collective. Now the form of the Collective, be it State, Race, Community, Society, the Proletariat, or what have you, is, I submit, a minor point, because, in the end, it is simply a rationalization for obtaining control.

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 and the major industries are nationalized while the workers are free to unionize and direct the operation of the nationalized industries. This is what we find happening in the United States slowly, but with a powerful counter movement toward fascism.

Statements like this come right out of the leftist handbook. They are just so much nonsense. Virtually every major concept presented therein is fraught with definitional and conceptual problems. And because you present it uncritically, one is left to wonder as to your true motives.

Both directions mean the loss of freedom.

It is, as many have pointed out, the same direction, towards totalitarianism.

Who reveres the traditional institutions of America more--the GOP or the left? Whichever does is closer to the Nazi party, however marginally. Who desires to change the traditional institutions of America in the name of combatting racism and promoting pluralism, creating a classless society? Whoever does is closer to the socialists. You've got to do the study time if you want to be able to write on this stuff with any accuracy. You are dealing in a social science where certain terms have very specific meanings to the people within that discipline. Again, I challenge you to go to the nearest university and find a single professor of political philosophy or science that will agree with you.

Um, whoever is a Constitutionalist is closer to a Nazi?? This is nonsense.

By whose definition do you argue? Even Marxists and Leninist theory disagree as to your assertions. And by simple extension of your definitions, since no one has ever implemented socialism, then the Russian, Chinese, German, Cambodian, etc. experiments weren't socialism. And the resulting 100 million dead can't be laid at their door steps. And if wasn't socialism, it must have been totalitarianism and therefore a crime of the right? More nonsense!

jodorowsky wrote: Coca Cola appeals to the desire to transform society into a timeless stasis where there is "Always Coca-Cola", while Pepsi is the choice of the new generation who align themselves with the joy of cola in and of itself.

While you professed ignorance as to jodorowsky's point, it remains. Just because 2 entities claim they are wholly different and their proponents claim they are wholly different, does NOT, in fact, make them wholly different.

The ultimate aim of socialism is the abolition of the state by reaching the stage of communism, when the state withers away to a mere administrative body, there being so much surplus production and so little class distinction that no organized force is necessary and therefore no state in the classical sense.

Yes and No. While Marxist and Leninist theory hold generally the same end point, it is widely recognized that they are describing communism. Think of it another way: Socialism (control) is the means to the end (communism).

Fascism on the other hand, raises the state, as the epitome of the character of its' people to the level of a God, to be worshipped, as was Hitler in his role as the Fuhrer, or leader. The state is associated with various religious symbols that take on mystical proportions such as the swastika and the devil’s head of the SS. Class distinctions are not only maintained, but are emphasized to the point of open classism and racism.

No difference so far with the soviet or maoist models...;-)

You can argue all you want, but walk into any university in the United States and ask any professor of political philosophy whether German national socialism was in any way socialism and leftist and you will hear the same answer I am giving you.

Circular logic, my dear boy. Ask any communist if the Nazis were communist? Always good for a laugh, but meaningless.

You quote to me a critic of socialism to prove that the Nazi's were socialists! What kind of proof is this!

Pretty good proof, actually, if it adheres to the Objectivist reality that you claim to believe. But if critics of socialism won't cut it for you, then the Nazis themselves must be good proof, because they claim they are socialists and use much ink to explain how and why. In the current environment, for socialists (or by your apparent definition, communists) to deny Nazism is clearly no proof that the Nazis weren't socialists.

You claim I am giving you superficial differences. Well, let me make it clear then. Socialism is a stage on the way to the abolition of the state--no government, period. That is the far left. Nazism is the organization of the state into a form that is to be worshipped for the purpose of raising one race of people above all others--that is the far right. On one hand there is no government, on the other the government assumes the role of God. That is the theoretical difference.

You're close. Socialism is the means to achieve communism (the end of the state). Communism is far left. Socialists often think they are not quite so far left. But because socialism leads relentlessly to totalitarianism, it is far left in reality. And Nazism, because it leads to the same end state and uses virtually the same means as the socialists to achieve it, is logically, far left as well.

Practically, the Nazi's did not nationalize a single industry.

Read the article:

Under communism, there is collective ownership of property DEJURE. Under Nazism, there is the same collective ownership DE FACTO. It is a difference without meaning in this context.

Thanks for a graet post.Stryker asked for profs who would agree with the proposition before us, well here we go.

Kenneth H. W. Hilborn {Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Western Ontario, Kenneth Hilborn's primary field of specialization is 20th Century international relations with an emphasis on the impact of ideologies. During the Cold War, he wrote extensively on international issues for newspapers and anti-Communist periodicals. He reported from Australia, Berlin, Cyprus, Nationalist China (Taiwan and Quemoy), southern Africa and Southeast Asia (including South Vietnam). For several years, his book reviews appeared from coast to coast in Canadian newspapers of the Thomson chain.

Professor Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973), was the outstanding representative of the so-called "Austrian School" of economics. He was world-renowned for his research, writing, and teaching, and long served as a member of the staff of The Foundation for Economic Education (FEE).

Publication of The Theory of Money and Credit in 1912 won him early recognition as one of Europe's foremost economists. Among his many other books and articles, one of his most important contributions is his Socialism, first published in 1922. However, he is best known for his work published in the United States, notably Omnipotent Government (1944), Bureaucracy (1944), Planned Chaos (1947), Human Action (1949), Planning For Freedom (1952), The Anti-Capitalist Mentality (1956), Theory and History (1957), and Epistemological Problems of Economics (1960).

In 1926, Dr. Mises founded the Austrian Institute of Business Cycle Research. From then until the Anschluss of Austria by Germany in 1938, the Institute was one of the centers of economic and statistical research in Europe. For more than twenty years, Dr. Mises taught economics at the University of Vienna. From 1934 to 1940, he occupied the chair of International Economic Relations at the Graduate Institute of International Studies at Geneva, Switzerland. He lectured as a guest at various universities and institutions in Great Britain, the United States, Italy, the Netherlands, and Mexico.

Professor Walter Block {Professor Walter Block, formerly senior economist with the Fraser Institute in Vancouver, and recently-past professor of economics at College of the Holy Cross in Worcester Massachusetts, is now chair of the Department of Economics and Finance at the University of Central Arkansas in Conway Arkansas.

How many more do I need or is their a magic number to be valid?

An intelligent reply. My problems with it are these. First, you are trying to impose a new definition of the left and the right on a social science that has always defined the left and the right based upon the liberal/conservative split that developed around the writings of John Locke and Edmund Burke. I agree with most everything you wrote when imposing this new paradigm, where the power of the state is measured to the left, and its' diminishing power is considered moving to the right. But that is not the historical model. No one knows what you are talking about without first making clear that you have changed paradigms from what is generally accepted to one that is used primarily by libertarians.

Second, the new paradigm that you use is not sufficient to distinguish between fascism and socialism. While both may result in omnipotent states, there are very real differences between the two that must be taken into account; differences that are best explained based on the classical left/right spectrum. In the case of fascism, there is in fact no nationalization of industry. It remains in private hands, and slave labor is provided by the state to the profit of individual owners of the means of production. Additionally, differences between the populace are accentuated: the state promotes racism and intolerance and promotes a supposedly superior, indiginous people to an elevated position over all others. These are not theoretical matters. They are actual acts that fascism has shown itself to do. Additionally, fascism raises the symbols of nationalism, usually adding new ones, but nevertheless symbols that revere the traditions of the fascist society, to the level of worship. Do not fool yourself that there was anything Christian about Hitler's Germany. One worshipped the State and the Fuhrer, and could be shot for worshipping "that Jewish bastard," quoting Hitler.

On the other hand, socialist societies have nationalized the land and industries of the countries in which socialists have come to power. They have vastly expanded the rights of women and minorities within those societies, and have entered upon programs of forced equality of the sexes, races, etc. I'm sure you saw FOX's coverage of the school's for women and the minority tribe's in Afghanistan set up under the socialist government that once existed there. Again, these are actions that really occur and are different from actions that occur under fascism.

Now here is where you do make a serious mistake and why this issue is so important. You state basically that the works of Marx and Lenin are synonomous. Nothing could be further from the truth, and it is here that libertarians must be very aware of the distinctions between the left and right on the classical scale. Marx wrote that the western industrial democracies would evolve into socialism and then into communism. He also developed the idea that overproduction by those countries would lead to colonialism and periodic wars when the international markets would be redistributed between those industrialized countries. With his involvement in the First International, Marx tentatively wrote that it might be possible for a colony or third world country during a war for national liberation to skip the capitalist stage and move directly to forced socialism if a dedicated cadre of communist party members could be ready to seize power at the opportune moment.

Lenin, in his "What is to be Done," and "Imperialism, the Last Stage of Capitalism," took this idea and developed the actual technique and structure that such a party would have to use to seize and maintain power against the capitalist efforts to recolonize a country. Hence, it is Lenin that promoted the use of force by the state, other than democratic, to seize and maintain power by socialists, not Marx.

But this is very important to us as libertarians. If we examine closely current events in the United States, we find that Marx was absolutely correct, not the failed theorotician our masters would have us believe. What else is the new tolerance that we must all accept that states not only must we tolerate others differences and opinions but those differences and opinions are as valid and true as our own? What else is affirmative action and Title IX and abortion on demand except the evolution of the United States into a socialist society? What else is the redistribution of wealth through the graduated income tax and the welfare system than creeping socialism? What else is the erasure of our heritage and history in our public schools so that our children now know more about Pocohantas than George Washington and Thomas Paine? What else is the gradual abolition of our right to own and bear arms? And I could go on and on.

My point is that there is value in remembering the traditional left/right spectrum placing socialism with its nationalization of industry, redistribution of wealth, and destruction of the traditional institutions of a society on the left and fascism with its' nationalization of minority groups as a labor force, its' raising of a single race to privileged status, and its' not mere reverence, but worship of the traditional institutions and symbols of the society on the right. Through this paradigm we can measure how far we have moved from the center, where there is balance and safety.

I agree that in the end what matters is whether we are free. Therefore, a paradigm such as you use is very beneficial in measuring simply how far we are from totalitarianism, whether it be totalitarianism of the left or right. But we should also be very aware of which type of totalitarianism is the biggest threat at any given moment. The classical paradigm used in political science departments across this nation does that job well, and demonstrates that the danger comes now from the left.

My hat is off to you, My Identity, for an excellent argument. Stryker