Any idea what Socialism actually is?

Please point out the taxes that they owed that were not paid. Bet you cannot.

 

In name only. The Nazis were a fascist group, i.e., Hitler worked with the industrialists to put most people to work and provide a decent standard of living. In return, the industrialists got huge armaments contracts. That was, of course, the recipe for militarism and ultimate disaster. He had to continue to feed the industrialists.

You are wrong about the 'socialism' part and, in fact, Hitler hunted socialists down on the street and either killed them or put them in camps. Most German socialists at the time were Jewish. He feared them because of what had happened in Russia, Ukraine, Poland, etc. where the Jewish-led Bolsheviks (and off-shoots) had taken over.

 

So many posts in this thread; yet so little truth. I know it's politics and not history, so sine ira et studio doesn't apply here, but please, for the sake of decency, at least get facts right. For example OP seems frustrated, because he doesn't know (or doesn't want to know) what socialism is and what it stands for. Well, read then, good friend! For truth shall set you free. Hitler for example was no way socialist or anything remotely like it.

 

That's not "progressive".

 

No, Hitler ran a variation on socialism which is not, by the book, socialism. By the book socialism is where the state owns the means of production. By the book capitalism is where individuals own the means of production. Fascism largely permitted private ownership over the means of production to remain, but laid such heavy and excessive taxes and regulation as the control the means of production without owning it. THAT - is economic fascism, and it is what people like Bernie Sanders are advocating.

Please bear in mind, though, that this comparison carries ZERO social comparison to Nazism.

 

Hitler was actually a socialist, just not a pure socialist - fascism is a variation on socialism.

Remember we're talking about economics here - social conservativism or social liberalism are out of the picture, and when you look at economics alone it is clear that fascism is NOT socialism, but it is a variant very much in line with the socialist way of thinking, not the capitalist way of thinking. They actually created a law against undefined "excessive profits" and a law which stated that private businesses are obligates to put the interests of the nation ahead of their own. It is "national socialism", or fascism. And what surprises me is that, although he is no social conservative, in nearly every other regard Sanders is similar to the Nazis. But apparently all that we understand now of Nazism (in the popular mind) is that it was extreme social conservativism.

 

So Sanders is fascist now? Wow. Now this is something truly outright insane thing to say. Hitler ran a system that was not anywhere near to any kind of socialism. The fact that the state was involved in economy and regulated the market for military purposes is not socialism. Also, what you call "by the book socialism" is, while occured in several countries, is not socialism in a Marxist, or even in a Bernsteinian sense. What you described as economic fascism is actually corporatism and even then there's a plethora of variations of that system too. But strictly, social democracy is not one of them. And Sanders is a social democrat.

PS.: Yes, Sanders is a social democrat. Not socialist, not communist, not a unicorn. A social democrat. Deal with it already.

 

Fascism did not transfer the ownership of means of production from private to common. It had a different economic theory than socialism and it opposed socialism in social matters too. Socialism is internationalist, fascism was extremely nationalist. Different economic theory, different opinions on social matters, different rhetoric and different values. I really don't see how fascism was a variation of socialism. It was not.

 

Thanks, some folks need it spelled out, or flaming ignorance dominates the conversation. Your knowledge is much appreciated.

 

Good points. In fact, German SDs flocked to the NSDAP.

"And it was not only workers in 'low tech' industrial regions where firms were small and widely scattered and where the socialist activists had trouble finding a foothold but also among onetime Social Democrats who found the Nazi invocation of the Volksgemeinschaft attractive. Recent research has shown that nearly one-third of Nazi members and Nazi voters were workers, many of them industrial workers. In the 1932 elections the Nazis made significant inroads into the Social Democratic camp - one of every ten Nazi voters in the summer was an ex Social Democrat ... How do we make sense of the surprisingly large working class vote for the Nazis, which until recently scholars have simply missed?" Peter Fritzsche, "Germans into Nazis," Harvard University Press, Cambridge Mass., 1998 p. 201,202.

Workers committees in every significant business could send their bosses to reeducation camps.

The NSDAP was also especially popular among university professors and the young.

 

In fact, there was a Fascist International, while Stalin's "Socialism In One Nation" was, of course, national socialism. Fortunately Italy's fascism and German national socialism were disrupted by war. Unfortunately both movements are far too durable.

 

The Soviet NEP allowed for private ownership of businesses. Was that "corporatism"? Is that what we see now in China, Vietnam ...?

 

Lumpenproletariat. Socialism does not equal workerism. It is also not surprising about social democrats turning to national socialism. The radicals were actually betrayed and massacred back in 1919 by Ebert who associated with the fascistic Freikorps. Many of those who remained were theoretical successors to Austromarxism which leaned towards nationalism.

 

In fact, it is, yes. None of these countries were socialist or communist in a Marxian sense of the word. Not politically, because they rejected original Marxist concepts in favor of the Leninist vanguard party which inherently led to dictatorship and corruption. And also not economically, because without permanent revolution, it is impossible to set up a communist economy in a capitalist world. (And that answers the question why Stalin's socialism in one country was a failure. And regarding your other post, Stalin was actually pretty nationalist, unlike many of his rivals who were either executed or banished.)

 

Radicals do tend to purge their ranks, but leftist intellectuals - progressives of every stripe around the world praised national socialism, fascism, Hitler and Mussolini.

"Faced with the thousands of spontaneous expressions of approval – fragments of a large scale capitulation – one asks oneself in amazement what were the causes of the success which the blatantly anti-intellectual movement of National Socialism enjoyed among poets and thinkers. This success casts grave doubts upon the proposition that the high ranking officers and big industrialists had shown themselves the weakest points in withstanding the regime’s seduction and blackmail; for unquestionably ‘National Socialism succeeded more rapidly and effectively in its assault on people’s minds than in its seizure of political and social power’.” Joachim C. Fest, “The Face of the Third Reich,” “Portraits of the Nazi Leadership,” Pantheon Books NY 1970, P. 249. (Internal quote Karl Bracher taken by Fest from Bracher Sauer, and Schulz, “Die nationalsozilistische Machtergreifung&#8221

In the US, the founder of the Socialist Club at Harvard, Walter Lippmann, incredibly, offered full throated praise for Hitler.

 

Nah, fascism is more a variation on corporatism. The means of production are always in the hands of the private enterprises. Although, as I see it, the government is also in the hands of the private enterprises. So you could say fascism is socialism for the corporations. Not unlike what we entered into 30 years ago.

 

I realize that this is the standard, but dictatorships are not socialist any more than dictatorships are democracies. These are examples of how these societies were sold a bill of goods so that absolute control could be established, and once the citizens realized they had been had, it was too late.

Many parts of the USA are already socialist by nature. The military is a good example. A national highway is another form of socialism.

Did you know that the Pledge of Allegiance for the USA was written a socialist based on socialist principals? Probably not. Socialism by concept isn't what most people will tell you it is, any more than the crony capitalism we have fallen into is true capitalism created by our corrupt government/plutocracy.

It does no good to point out the obvious to partisan hacks and sheeple, because they will never listen to reason in the first place. This country cannot survive under a plutocracy any more than it can under a dictatorship. This is what people need to put more of their energy into fighting, because continuing to be divided with misinterpreted manipulated BS propaganda, is only adding to the situation that is slowly destroying us already.

 

Most conservative anti-communists have never actually read either Marx or Lenin - ditto most modern Leftists. They should.

Marx and Lenin were both ferocious critics of the leviathan state. Lenin denounced most of the socialist leaders of his time as "opportunists" who wanted to capture the existing bureaucracy rather than crush it. To a large extent Lenin did crush the existing structure. He seems to have been a bit surprised when a similar structure recreated itself spontaneously under his rule.

Of course, Stalin was not surprised by anything - until he underestimated his ally, Hitler.

Lenin and Marx did not think either America or the UK required a revolution. Lenin felt that way until their bureaucracies expanded shortly before WW II. History ignores so much.

 

Yes but government-owned economy constitues a lot of economic ideologies that are not necessarily socialistic. Socialism simply means that the group will give their resources to an individual who has less, even if the group has to sacrifice some of their stuff for that individual. "All for one and one for all". this does not necessarily mean state-owned. Democratic socialists want to do this through democratic means, whereas the Soviets used the government to just force it through. Which is why they were the Soviet Socialist Republic. I wouldn't characterise them as communist because they didn't communally own things as Karl Marx suggested, but rather took from the rich to give to the poor, it just so happens that they did this using governmental force.

 

I mostly agree with Debord's critique of Leninism on that matter which is somewhat identical to what you said. I don't know if you're familiar with Debord's criticism of Leninism in The Society of the Spectacle. If you are, then you know what I talk about, if not, then I recommend it.

 

Saying Democratic Socialism is like saying Humanitarian Genocide putting a nice word first does not make the second word any better. There is no democracy with socialism. The more socialism you have the less freedom you have.

 

I think this is a blatant generalization, since many leftist (and even right-winger) intellectuals were opposed to fascistic tendencies. Hannah Arendt was one for example, or the Frankfurt School in the interwar period but I don't think I need to bring up more. And even among right-wing intellectuals many were opposed to Nazism, like Spengler, Jünger, and Huizinga. Supporting the Nazis was not as widespread as you trying to picture it.

 

Since socialism in a Marxist or in an anarcho-communist sense is the way of democratization of economy (and a way that leads to a classless and stateless society) instead of the inherently fascistic concept of laissez faire economy which is basically sociopathy and crisis institutionalized, I beg to differ. There are two great problems with your reasoning.

1. You refuse to see the difference between very distinctive branches and tendencies of socialist thought. Democratic socialism and Bernsteinian social democracy are very different from Marxist-Leninism (applied in most countries that called themselves communist or socialist) and also from libertarian communist tendencies (which influenced the Free Territory of Ukraine, the EZLN, the 1956 revolution of Hungary, and more recently the Rojava revolution.) Even then you have several different branches of social democracy. Swedish Folkhemmet is hardly the same thing as Blair's third way for example. Don't generalize.

2. You fail to see that capitalism and democracy don't go hand in hand. Franco, Salazar, Horthy, Carlos Castillo Armas, Batista, Pinochet, Suharto were all dictators and capitalists. Authoritarianism has nothing to do with one particular economic policy.

 

Have not read that source, now I will - thanks. I have read a lot of criticism of Lenin. Early on from the anti-communist right eventually from left. I had read a great deal of Marx, but not Lenin. Then I made myself read the entire Bible which, from my rather secular perspective, I found almost entirely at odds with the common interpretations one hears from many devout believers, and decided I should give What Is To Be Done, and State and Revolution a thorough read. Similar reaction - I was surprised by the contrast between what people think he stood for and what he actually did stand for. And Lenin is not subtle.

"'The eradication of state power' which was a 'parasitic excrescence'; it's 'amputation'; it's 'destruction'; 'state power is now becoming outmoded'; these are the expressions used by Marx about the state when appraising and analyzing the experience of the commune." All this was written a little less than half a century ago; and now it is like having to carry out excavations in order to bring a knowledge of undistorted Marxism to the broad masses." "The State and Revolution", VI Lenin, Penguin, 1992p, p. 49.

Frankly I think the best human thinkers throughout human history have been struggling to find a way to keep central power from expanding and devouring us. Lenin and Marx got that part. The problem remains.

 

Economic fascism is where the means of production are (primarily) in private hands, but where the state taxes or regulates to the point of effectively controlling the means of production without owning them. This just is what it is - I'll note that you haven't disputed this, it sounds like you just don't like the natural result of that fact.

lol, "deal with it"? hahaha, I never said he was a social Democrat - I said that, economically, his policies are fascist. Kind of like I'm an fiscal conservative, even though not a social conservative, Sanders is economically fascist, even if not socially.

Never said it did.

Yeah it did - I said it did. "A variation of socialism" that was the exact same as socialism... wouldn't be a variation.... -_-

Did you miss the part where I said economic fascism was a variation of socialism? Socialism is where the state owns the means of production. Fascism is where the state does not own, but effectively controls the means of production.

Your entire point, thus far, has been, "but it had a difference..." yes, any variation of x is going to be different than x. And, as I made ABUNDANTLY CLEAR, I was talking about economic policy.