In the US, the word “socialism” seems to be confused with ”communism” like they were exchangeable. Mostly like people think vegan and vegetarian are the same thing. Nazis and Soviets were both socialists, despite being classified as right and left wing respectively.
There’s a lot of things the US could do so much better if it understood that even hardcore republicans can be socialist and remain ideologically intact.
I guess we’ll have to find another word for it, since this one seems to have been tainted during the Cold War.
I don't disagree from your overarching point, but just a nitpick:
I mostly disagree when you say that Nazis were socialists. Of those people who supported the Nazis, the vast majority did so in part because the Nazis marketed themselves to those people as socialists. On the other hand, Hitler marketed the Nazis to "the industrialists" as enemies of the communists: in Germany too communism and socialism was bundled together. So I would say it's more accurate that Nazism was a bunch of marketing ideas that Hitler et al used to grab power.
Now, you could say the same thing about the soviets, that their ideology was just a tool for grabbing power. They might have flipfloped on other topics, but I don't think they flipfloped on the specific topic of socialism.
They maintained a socialist state, financing the healthcare of all with the contributions (not symmetrical) of society. Not surprising. Spain’s healthcare system (arguably one of the best public ones) was started by Franco, a fascist ditactor.
They also did some other pretty socialist-things with ecology
> is a matter of considerable debate to say the least.
Correct. Ironically the person you're responding had an issue with the black and white claim that "socialism=communism" and wanted to add nuance, and did that by presenting a black and white claim that "the nazis were socialists", which is a claim that could use a lot more nuance.
I'm not so sure I buy this article. It seems to spend quite a bit of time defending claims that the Nazis were socialist from the obvious modern-day attacks of Trump supporters, which is probably not the way to get the most historically-valid ideas.
I spent a (tiny) bit of time looking for other articles on this topic, and it seems like one of the main arguments goes something like "Nazis were not socialists - they were racists". However, I really fail to see what one thing has to do with the other. The other main argument is much better - that the Nazis were using the word "socialist" in their name as a cynical political ploy, and not really an expression of their "true beliefs".
For my part, I have to say I was quite surprised when recently reading "Rise and Fall of the 3rd Reich", which talked a bit about the Nazis actual policies towards the economy. I have to say, they certainly sounded very socialist to my (libertarian-leaning) ears. I mean, they took major control of the economy, dictating work hours and salaries, among other clearly socialist/communist things that I can't quite remember anymore.
I think it's a pretty interesting question, and as others have said, "Socialism" isn't so well-defined. But looking at actual Nazi policies instead of motivations and rhetoric seems to me to be table-stakes in actually understanding the issue.
They maintained a socialist state, financing the healthcare of all with the contributions (not symmetrical) of society. Not surprising. Spain’s healthcare system (arguably one of the best public ones) was started by Franco, a fascist ditactor.
I like Hayek's "planning" tool for distinguishing socialism. That is, does the ideology position the state as the planner of its citizens lives in one way or another? Socialism is the intervention of the state in its citizens lives be it healthcare, industry, moral rules, etc. From this view fascism is indeed socialism.
The alternative is liberalism or the absence of planning.
By that definition, many monarchies would be "socialist" (E.g. the German Empire, which created many of the social security systems in Germany, specifically to avoid socialism rising). That sounds like a pretty massive re-definition of the term to allow pushing it into a one-dimensional scale, especially in the context of the time where the Nazis choose their label.
German monarchy yielded a lot to socialist demands to avoid revolution. This concessions, of course, made German Empire more socialist country then many people believe.
That seems to be describing governance, democracy and rule of law. Before that we had feudalism for thousands of years. And before that there were informal market places where people exchanged goods and services, the ultimate 'information processors' according to Hayek, yet these marketplaces did not lead to any kind of civilization, progress, 'freedom' or modernism.
Without rule of law there is barbarism. Any law infringes 'freedom', the thief's freedom, the plunderers freedom, the polluters freedom, the arsonists freedom, the greedy fisherman's freedom, so whose freedom are you going to protect and whose freedom will you take? And if you take someone's freedom they will not consent so you need force.
That means you need planning to develop rules, to convince the majority to agree to the rules, a system to enforce the rules and reach some kind of ongoing consensus for any sustainable peaceful society. And you are back to a society with planning, rules, democracy, governance and loss of 'freedom'. Even a basic marketplace needs 'planning' and rules to function so this 'market as planner' thesis seems aspirational.
The main difference is whether the rules are set ahead of time or whether they're adjusted by a central authority. For example, compare the tort system to a regulatory board. Hayek explores this distinction in detail in the Road to Serfdom.
One core idea of fascism is that in unity lies strength. The main symbol of this is the faces, where the rods are made stronger by being made together. This idea is not incompatible with socialism, on the contrary. Now of course there's the flip side, which excludes everyone who are not in the group. Stuff like Jews are not true Germans or something. That side I would say is indeed incompatible with socialism.
But try for a moment to see it from a fascist's perspective. Who they care about, really? It's easy to only see one's peers, and not so hard to feel contempt towards outsiders. I bet that from the inside, fascism can easily feel socialist. A current example I think would be some anti-fascist groups, which despite their stated goals can be pretty fascist.
Antisemitism absolutely was incompatible with official USSR ideology. So was any form of racism and nationalism. That doesn't mean it didn't exist of course, but it was never official policy as in Nazi Germany.
It's not true. Socialism can go well (and is going well) with many sorts of other *isms, simply by re-definition, or making compromises for "greater good". Soviet Union had some semi-hidden policies which broke its own pledges, but it also had a lot of official manifestations, which apparently weren't seen as uncomfortable. E.g. Soviet anthem mentioned "great Russia" in the first stanza. Official Kremlin guard was selected on a combination of ideological, and racial features. And, believe me, I can continue with this for a long time.
Antisemitism in Soviet Union followed from the way they understood equality. For example, they look at the distribution of university students and notice that Jews are over-represented while, say, Uzbeks are under-represented. That's not fair, let's fix this inequality with admissions quota.
I would like to add that a true libertarian would be aghast at the thought of a state bailing out private ventures, especially without assimilating them, no matter how big or small.
Most people don’t dive deep into ideologies. They stay in the surface and end up believing whatever the media outlet expresses as a “truth widely acknowledged”.
Ideologies are not geometric proofs. Whatever you believe, whether it's socialism, communism, or in the Great Pumpkin, you have to live and work with other people. So you gotta compromise it. And it's not like the "pure" version is so awesome and every compromise is a failure. No. No pure version of anything has ever worked, so it's all hacks to one degree or another.
When things don't work as promised those compromises also give the ideologues the opportunity to claim that their ideology would have worked if it only had been applied correctly.
Political power is all about selling the dream. Various dreams sell differently to various demographics at various times.
The dreams don't have to make sense, or even be implementable. People just have to buy into them. Highly-emotional, easy-to-understand dreams get a lot of buy-in.
One of the things I like about my personal philosophy, which I'm not going to talk about, is that it teaches me how to lose. That is, it teaches me how to compromise with lots of other folks with different dreams. That's quite unusual. Most of the time the hardcore folks of any political philosophy are busy fighting the evil bad guys in some other group and purity-checking the folks in their own camp.
There is a meta level to politics, and you can live there without sacrificing any of your values.
In the US, the word “socialism” seems to be confused with ”communism” like they were exchangeable
Marx and Engels used them interchangeably too, so you can see where the confusion would arise.
You might be surprised, if you read them, just how little they had to say about how it would all actually work. There’s no detailed blueprint for a communist utopia anywhere in their writing. Mainly they just critique the class system - and you can see that the observations they made were often quite accurate even in today’s world of zero-hours contracts and the gig economy. I’m pretty capitalist myself, but some of this is taking it too far.
From communist viewpoint socialism is an intermediate stage before achieving communism. And in Soviet Union propaganda both terms were used interchangeably to describe their side in the Cold War. And many self-described socialists in the West sympathised strongly with Soviets (even not being friendly with hardcore Stalinism), believing the USSR, and its satellites are the counterweight and alternative to the capitalist alliance united around the US.
So there's no mistake, it's just a historical practice.
The Nazis were not Socialists.
They came to power by opposing Communists and Socialists, who were seen as a threat to middle class Germans and their property.
The Nazis and facists in Italy operated a dictatorship for the benefit of corporations.
It’s true that some corporations did very well under those regimes, but it’s not accurate to say that enriching corporations is why they did what they did. Hitler never thought “starting a war is the perfect cover for making my buddies in the private sector rich”, he wasn’t angling for a lucrative post-political career as a board member or a lobbyist or after-dinner speaker.
every action was done for the benefit of corporations
Corporate interests were pretty low down the priority list in those regimes. German corporations would certainly have been more competitive and profitable if they had kept their Jewish workers and been permitted to use "Jewish science". The Nazis merrily hamstrung the corporations in their territory for the sake of their overarching ideology, they totally subordinated economic interests to serve the State.
I suppose it's because most people already know that 'fact', and pointing it out doesn't meaningfully add to the discussion (other than possibly imply that calling yourself a socialist automatically makes you one).
It seems pretty directly relevant in response to the claim that "the Nazis came to power by opposing Socialists".
As far as the implication you mention, I wouldn't say that calling yourself a socialist automatically makes you one; I would say that to determine what "socialist" is supposed to mean it is informative to look at what people calling themselves "socialist" believe; but I would especially say that it's unlikely for the "national socialist workers' party" to have come to power by opposing "socialists".
> "In general, the manifesto was antisemitic, anti-capitalist, anti-democratic, anti-Marxist and anti-liberal.[49] To increase its appeal to larger segments of the population, on the same day as Hitler's Hofbräuhaus speech on 24 February 1920, the DAP changed its name to the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei ("National Socialist German Workers' Party", or Nazi Party).[50][51] The word "Socialist" was added by the party's executive committee, over Hitler's objections, in order to help appeal to left-wing workers.[52]"
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_Party)
I am not too familiar with all of this, but surely it's not such a weird thought that a party might call itself socialist even if it opposes the actual socialist? A bit like how a despot might call his party or country democratic.
Nazism was an explicitly socialist project, with society defined very narrowly, and everyone outside society othered into subhumanity. As long as you were the right kind of person, there would be a place for you in the fascist scheme.
The opposite of socialist isn't capitalist; it's individualist. Nazis were not interested in promoting diversity in society. Exactly the opposite: conscious and explicit elimination of diversity.
The essence of fascism is teamwork. A feeling of togetherness is its binding emotion, subsuming your identity into something bigger than you. (Only by understanding this can you understand why it's so appealing.) The bundle (fasces) that's tied together won't be broken. The problem is that whomever wields the bundle now has outsize power, and whatever is not part of the bundle is garbage to be swept away.
It's oversimplification. Socialists and communists also struggled with each other. Communists actually labelled social-democrats as "fascists" for some time. Nevertheless, they have a lot in common (used to have even more in those times) - I don't think someone could argue with that. With communists/socialists national socialists shared their contempt to "outdated society", capitalist democracy ("plutocracy"), and they competed for attention of poor, and disappointed, and all embraced strict regulations. It's really depends on what you see as a core part of socialism, but similarities are plenty, both in goals and methods. That's why, for example, Zhelyu Zhelev's historical research on fascism was prohibited across all socialist countries as it was too easy to see parallels.
It didn't take much to get on the list back then just checking out a copy of the Communist Manifesto from the public library was all it took to get on the list. A lot of writers who were simply voracious readers with no organizational connections to communists landed on the lists for their reading habits alone.
Sounds antithetical to the librarians' creed. Can someone who might have worked in a library explain how this information would have been shared with the FBI?
regarding the DETCOM list (the list of people to round up and imprison in an "emergency" situation), I think it is safe to assume every modern nation has such a list (or even multiple lists of different gradation/priority, probably some traveling "sales"-man for swift round up involved too):
consider how quickly Turkey rounded up critics etc after the failed coup attempt.
technology has only made tracking citizens much easier and more detailed
I wonder what would happen if such a list got leaked? would it automatically prompt the listed people to be rounded up? or would it be too transparent, such that the targeted people start collaborating?
Do people still take Gizmodo seriously after the dishonest reporting they did of the Damore memo (i.e removing all links /references and calling it the full memo)?
Well, they linked to the source in this instance. If you don't trust them you can go and read the FBI reports directly and form your own opinion about it.
The title alone invokes laughter. "Man investigated for links to communist activity" like it's the bogey man. I feel a sense that old media is ratcheting up the rhetoric like good doggys
OK, but it is no secret that Toffler indeed was a Communist and later a committed Marxist. It is also known that the Soviets ran numerous spy rings and infiltrated unions and worker organizations throughout the US; the Red Scare was perhaps an overreaction, but it was not completely unfounded. So it is no surprise that he was heavily watched by FBI and others.
(I am Russian, libertarian, and keep some interest in Cold War history. By the way, Toffler authored amazing books; if you haven’t read “Third Wave” yet, you totally should. It was finished in 1980 and it completely describes the future of today: from societal anxiety from Silicon Valley automation to the rise of Trumpism. I was really impressed.)
In the US, the word “socialism” seems to be confused with ”communism” like they were exchangeable. Mostly like people think vegan and vegetarian are the same thing. Nazis and Soviets were both socialists, despite being classified as right and left wing respectively.
There’s a lot of things the US could do so much better if it understood that even hardcore republicans can be socialist and remain ideologically intact.
I guess we’ll have to find another word for it, since this one seems to have been tainted during the Cold War.
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