redbloodedamerica:

Yes…Nazis Are Socialists!

Nazis were socialists.  Simple as that.  But the minute you say that, leftists and the advocates of socialism will claim that they are not.  I can tell you right now that anywhere that this video is posted will have someone posting a link that they grabbed from Google in which they literally typed in “Nazis weren’t socialists” – it’ll come from Snopes or some Marxist professor on Twitter and others.  And we’ll get into some of those refutations in just a little bit.  But let’s get into what socialism actually is and how it pertains to Nazism.

Of course Nazis stands for

National Socialist German Workers’ Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei).  But if you bring this up they’ll just say something like, “I’ll bet you believe buffalo wings are made from buffalo too.”  But I don’t need to mention the name to highlight how they are indeed socialists.  Socialism is an interesting philosophy because it means different things to even the advocates.  This actually works to the benefit of those who are advocates of socialism, because when socialism leaves a trail of dead bodies, like Zedong’s China or Pol Pot’s Cambodia, they can just say, “It wasn’t real socialism.”  But when they see a nation that they see some kind of modern welfare state, like in Scandinavia, they try to take credit for it.

Now, for the better part of history, socialism and communism were often used synonymously, but that doesn’t mean it was exclusively the case.  This is why I find it odd when people claim Nazis can’t be socialists because they killed some other socialists.  That’s rather meaningless because socialists have always been at odds.  For example, Proudhon was a mutualist anarchist who happened to have referred to himself as a socialist; but he was very critical of state socialists like Louis Blanc, who was also a socialist.  Also Joseph Déjacque was at odds with Proudhon as he believed the workers did not have a right to the product of their labor, but rather satisfaction of his/her needs whatever may be their nature.  You can imagine how that in of itself could be spun to violent ends.  

But it doesn’t stop there.  Karl Marx was also at odds with Proudhon – hell, he wrote an entire book called “The Poverty of Philosophy,” which was written in direct criticism of Proudhon’s “The Philosophy of Poverty.”  They disagreed on strategy and core economics and other things.  Proudhon is also said to have written a letter to Marx criticizing Marx’s idea of revolution being necessary to get to their end game.  He stated, “I believe we have no need of [a revolution] in order to succeed; and that consequently we should not put forward ‘revolutionary action’ as a means of social reform, because that pretended means would simply be an appeal to force, to arbitrariness, in brief, a contradiction.”

So, like I said, they agree on end game but disagree on strategies.  So, many people refer to Marx as this beacon of socialism, and even the socialist of his time and shortly afterwards had disagreements with him and each other.

Now, Marx spoke of socialism and communism as the inevitable end game of transitioning from capitalism.  And although he believed the state would be different, he acknowledged its existence between the stages of capitalism and socialism.  The overwhelming majority of socialists have at some point recognized the state as being part of achieving their end game.  So the idea that because the state was used it is somehow not socialism is purely nonsensical.

So, socialism, historically speaking, has meant a range of different things.  And this is coming directly from the advocates of socialism.  They tend to agree on identifying problems, but they’re all over the place in terms of strategy – and less so in terms of hopeful end game.  So, what people have done is try to rid Nazism of being socialism because the end game was a tragic, violent end game.  They have even gone as far to claim that they were capitalists, which doesn’t make any sort of sense.  If you want to say that Nazism isn’t your brand of socialism, fine; but it is utter nonsense to suggest that it doesn’t fit the description of other forms of socialism.  It is even more foolish to suggest that it was capitalism, or claim that it was not socialism.

Some people have the nerve to claim that Nazis can’t be socialists because they had enemies that were socialists – as if that means something.  Socialists have historically beefed with other socialists.  So, that’s a complete non-point.  They also claim that the more fascist forms of government negate socialism, but fascism and socialism are not mutually exclusive terms.

By the late 1800s, Marxism was running amok in Russia.  Forming in the 1890s, you had the Emancipation of Labor Party, which many believe the first Russian Marxist clique.  Then emerged the more prominent party known as the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1898.  And shortly after you have the Socialist Revolutionary Party – which weren’t actually Marxists, but they were socialists.  So, socialists were everywhere and they were at odds with one another, even in Russia.  

Going back to the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, those fools could not even get along.  And by 1903, the Second Congress split into two different factions over disagreements regarding membership.  Now, Vladimir Lenin believed that party membership should be strict with active members that are ready to lead the revolution.  Now, Julius Martov on the other hand, didn’t necessarily agree with Lenin’s views.  So, they split.  Now, Lenin’s crew were known as the Bolsheviks and Martov’s crew were known as the 

Mensheviks.  And their members switched sides all the time.  A remember, during all of this there was a revolution taking place in Russia.  

By 1912, the party disbanded and Lenin and the Bolsheviks formed their own party, which had changed names multiple times.  We know this now as simply the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.  This is when we see some more historical names start shaking and moving.  Such as Leon Trotsky, who was a Marxist, but was originally a Menshevik who tried to restore the RSDLP, but failed and ended up becoming a Bolshevik with Lenin right before the October Revolution in 1917.

By 1922, Lenin became sick and everyone assumed Trotsky would become his successor, because he was basically second in charge; but a guy by the name of Joseph Stalin wasn’t having that.  Now as he was ill, Lenin was mapping out the Soviet Union governmental changes in his document known as “Lenin’s Testament.”  He recommended that Stalin be removed, as he was the General Secretary of the Russian Communist Party Committee.  Stalin meanwhile was gaining the support of delegates and party leaders.  There was also an anti-Stalin clique that formed known as the Left Opposition, which was ultimately unsuccessful in preventing the rise of Stalin.  Now, Stalin had Trotsky kicked out of the Central Committee and exiled. He was eventually assassinated. Stalin also had the remaining Left Oppositionists executed for the most part.

Then you had direct purges of Soviets, killing their own party members and civilians – we’re talking religious folks, peasants, other socialists and communists, all the way to old government officials from under Lenin.  These people were executed or sent to die in the gulags, which were the labor camps.  Also, I don’t understand why Stalin gets away with his sort of ethnic cleansing.  He did a similar thing as Hitler, just without as much direct execution.  Instead, they deported Greeks, Pols, Romanians, Koreans, Germans, and so forth.  And their excuse was always in defense of the collective.  So, you still had millions of people dying because they were being discriminated against…by socialists.  From the end of the Russian empire to Lenin to Stalin there was without a doubt socialist influence, and it led to aggression, execution, and ethnic cleansing efforts.  Who else did the same thing?

The Nazi Party starts with Anton Drexler, who like Lenin in Russia, saw a problem with his country.  Much of it he attributed to capitalism.  The difference between Drexler and Lenin was that Drexler didn’t oppose capitalism just solely based on economics.  There was also a bit of racism as he thought capitalism was a Jewish thing.  He also was not a full-blown Marxist, but he was indeed a socialist and an advocate of socialism, just in a more nationalistic form. He had more in common with Stalin than with Lenin and Trotsky, but they were all still socialists.  Drexler also emphasized the working class started the small German Workers Party.  These guys were against the current state, so the Weimar Republic army sent Adolf Hitler to infiltrate the party, which in turn grew it into a more prominent stature.  Again, these were national socialists that opposed both capitalism and the rise of Marxism in Germany.  And of course, they hated the Jews so they rose to prominence, changed their name to National Socialists German Workers Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei), and craft out this 25-point manifesto.

The argument that is made is that is that they only put “socialist” in the name to appeal to the leftists.  Of course they did.  They were also socialists.  And here are some of the most blatant socialistic points in their 25-point plan of the party that even Hitler reiterated himself:

• “Abolition of unearned (work and labour) incomes. Breaking of rent-slavery.”

• "We demand a division of profits of all heavy industries.”
• "We demand an expansion on a large scale of old age welfare.”
• ”…immediate communalization of the great warehouses and their being leased at low cost to small firms”
• “…the state is to be responsible for a fundamental reconstruction of our whole national education program, to enable every capable and industrious German to obtain higher education”
• ”…provision of a law for the free expropriation of land for the purposes of public utility”

They of course thought it was the state’s purpose to carry all this out.  This was not an anti-socialist platform, this was a socialist platform.  The reason they opposed Marxism wasn’t because of the socialism, it was because it was a more international socialist movement instead of a national one.

There was of course beef between the Nazis Party – that’s what socialists do.  And Hitler left the party only to rejoin under the condition that Drexler was removed and that he would replace him as chair of the party.  The Party continued to grow in membership.  They even had a children’s wing.  Just like the Communist Party in Russia, the Nazis were originally enemies of the established state.  They even tried a militaristic coup in 1923 in Munich, and it failed.  Some Nazis were killed by the troops and Hitler was thrown into prison.  This is where he wrote his stupid little manifesto “Mein Kampf.”

I also want to note that there was a fascist movement taking place in Italy around the same time led by Benito Mussolini, who shares a lot of similarities with Hitler.  He was actually more successful early on, because his coup got the job done.  Now, due to the similar policies it is often stated that Hitler and the Nazis were fascists, not socialists;  but those two terms are not mutually exclusive.  Who in the hell do you think influenced Mussolini?  Socialists.  He was a member of the Italian Socialist Party and was a huge fan of Marx.  He only deviated from the others because of his emphasis on nationalism.  So, like Hitler, he still was a socialist.  But because he was at odds with core Marxists he wasn’t necessarily a Marxist.  He was eventually killed by communists, but that just sort of speaks to this perpetual revolutionary state which socialism is in.  And what about the person who influenced Mussolini,

Giovanni Gentile, known as the “Godfather of Fascism” and was admittedly influenced by Karl Marx?  It’s almost like this is getting too easy.

Getting back to Germany, Hitler and other Nazis are in jail and the Nazi Party is out of control.  They’ve essentially been banned by the government.  He gets out the next year, the ban is lifted, and they’re back in business.  They continue to rise and were gaining more membership, and by 1933 the Nazi Party had the largest parliamentary bloc and Hitler becomes Chancellor of Germany.  That same year they pass the Enabling Act, which basically gave Hitler the power of a dictator, as he no longer had to wait for the Parliament to pass law.  So then Hitler then had the power of the state to act on his lunacy.  And like Stalin, he had also had his own purges where he was killing his opponents, including people in his own party. 

So, there seems to be a reoccurring theme with these socialists.  They identify a problem (largely stemming from being anti-capitalists), they are of course largely for the liberation of workers, then they plan this takeover and revolution, purge the centers, beef with other socialists, and then there’s mass suffering for an entire geographical area.  But make no mistake, Nazis Germany was socialist.  It was just a little bit different from the more Marxist influence in Russia.

You will also hear these socialist apologists and advocates go as far as to say that Nazi Germany was capitalist.  This is because there is a claim that Nazis privatized industries.  You’ve probably seen plenty of leftist publications and professors write in an attempt to confirm this, but it is so bogus and easily disproven.  When you own something legitimately it means you get to exclusively determine its usage, it is up to you to determine how it is used, sold, or whatever – so long as you are not using aggression upon another individual.  No such privatization existed during Nazi Germany.  That would have completely derailed their ability to have such power and control. Thus why they were anti-capitalists.  Instead, these industries were government controlled.  They told you how much you had to sell things for, what quantity to buy, who it could be sold to, and what prices it could be sold for.  They even dictated how much income you could receive and how much you had to pay your workers.  So, it was never legitimately private property.  These were not people acting freely within a market.  This was government controlling the means of production, and were enabled to “help the workers” for the “common good.”  It was socialism!  Nazis dealt with the same issues that the other socialists did in centralizing this authority.  They had price controls, wage controls, artificial inflation, and they did this to try to fund their welfare statism.  This is fundamental economics, people.  This gets you overages, shortages, malinvestment, and the problem gets worse as people try to make these adjustments to the problems that the government caused.  It’s such a fraudulent way of supply and demand.  The Nazis also nationalized entire industries, and for the ones that weren’t they simply set the rules on how they could produce things.  And if if you didn’t do it the way they said they just jacked it.  It was simply socialism in the national sense.

This is what socialism gets you.  Central planners try to repair issues that they caused interfering with the market.  And as problems are not actually solved, it justifies even more state control.  This is why socialism is so attractive to the most evil and corrupt individuals in human history.  They use its inevitable failure to control the populace.