Posted on 02/22/2014 2:49:10 PM PST by Sherman Logan
Sorry, but I can't buy that one.
Nazism was anti-Marxist in the extreme.
Americans, for some obscure reason, have a tendency to think of Marxism and socialism as synonyms.
In actual fact, of course, Marxism is merely one branch of the socialist tree.
Marxism is international socialism, all the workers are to gang up on their oppressors.
Nazism, as its name says, is national socialism. All Germans, and by racist extension all Aryans, are to gang up on people of all other "races."
IOW, Marxism organizes the workers of the world horizontally, Nazism organizes the Aryans of the world vertically.
They cut across each other and are therefore deadly enemies. They are both socialists, but Nazism is not Marxist.
That is why, as others have noted, a young German of the 30s could switch so easily. Just begin thinking of himself as German Aryan first, rather than an internationalist socialist worker, and voila!
I always recall reading a speech of Herman Goering’s from the mid 30s. To paraphrase it, in fascism you must have nationalism AND socialism because one without the other will not meet the needs of the people.
In the case of russia/china theres very little political freedom, but they have a lot more economic freedom than US.
Do US have political freedom or just an illusion of political freedom when both major party believe the same thing?
bump
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National Socialism and International Socialism are just two different denominations in the same “church”.
The fight between them is of the same order as that which once existed between the Protestants and the Roman Catholic Church. Both obeyed the same deity, but were torn apart on doctrinal differences. Of course, the schism between the two branches never, ever, was as bloody as the confrontation between Josef Stalin and Adolf Hitler. But it went on for a lot longer.
Likewise with the Nazis (Fascists) and the Soviets. Vladimir Putin is just the person who has formed an amalgamation, and a “ecumenical” reconciliation of the factions.
That does not make the existential threat of socialism any less deadly.
The danger is that fascism is always the softer sell than communism. See my post above.
I prefer to think of them as Al Capone vs Bugs Moran -- both vicious criminals who will kill anyone, with no remorse, that happens to get in their way.
I respect your opinion, but you’re off base.
The tenets of both communism and Nazism are dipped from the same Marxist river.
I’m not about to go through the whole sphere of Marxist thought to convince you that communism and Nazism are integral branches of the Marxism tree.
On the surface, I think that you’re embracing the incorrect European communist definition of Nazism, a conscious effort by the Euro-commies to separate themselves from their philosophical Marxist Nazi brothers.
Best wishes, FRiend
I am stealing that poster! Thanks, FRiend! ;-)
Capitalism: two people come together to agree on a price.
Socialism: two people come together to agree the other one is going to do it.
Fascism: the state agrees the other person needs supervision.
Communism: the state agrees the other person works for it.
Obviously I disagree. But thanks for being polite about it.
I hate toubled times.
Stalin only turned against Hitler when his non-aggression buddy broke his word and invaded him. Really unusual for Jonah to forget this.
Nationalism, like socialism, is collectivistic. National identity and patriotism are, after all, collective identities. The European right are far more focused on the traditional "organic" national collective than the American right is. As I have often pointed out on this forum, it was not a Communist but a French right winger who said "the individual is nothing; society is everything."
Nationalism was also originally a left-wing ideology aimed at the traditional complex and interlocking European aristocratic system. After the French Revolution various nationalities began to agitate for a state of their own rather than be ruled as subject peoples of emperors and kings of various kinds. One of the earliest of these romantic left wing nationalist movements was in Greece, where Lord Byron romantically died of some disease while hoping to romantically restore ancient Athens. Then you had the Irish, Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, Serbs, Finns, Lithuanians, Albanians, Armenians, and just about every other group you can think of. The nationalism of the Irish (and of the other Celtic peoples) is still this Jacobin-influenced French Revolutionary variety.
It was only in the later nineteenth century that nationalism migrated to the right side of the spectrum with the celebration of localism and traditionalism as opposed to the universalism and rationalism of the early leftist nationalists.
Marxism has always been a form of left wing nationalism simply because it has always advocated (or claimed to advocate) "self-determination," which is essentially the same thing as the "planet of peoples" the European right wants so badly to create. And then after World War II the anti-colonialism movement began and nationalism rather than Communism began the selling point for the USSR and the International Left. Even "indigenous" religions are celebrated by the formerly atheist left in such organizations as the American Indian Movement.
Individualism is also an exceedingly complex ideology, and is present in both the left and the right. Some on the American right overestimate the importance of individualism in their own ideology IMHO.
Political Science bump for later.....
There is one major component of Fascism--especially the Catholic, Mediterranean, non-nordic Fascism practiced in greater or lesser degree by Fascist Italy, Franco Spain, Salazar Portugal, Vargas Brazil, Dollfuss Austria, and perhaps Peronist Argentina (though I'm not sure about this last one) that most Americans completely miss noticing because it is so radically different from anything they are used to. And that is the abolition of an ideological/partisan parliament in favor of a legislative body made up of various occupational groups (in Italy this was called the Chamber of Fasces and Corporations). The goal was to replace representation by ideology with representation by the various functions of society (Fascist "corporatism"). In Spain and Portugal, political parties as such did not exist at all, because they were considered unnecessary and undesirable. The whole point was a population wholly "organically" united by societal function like a living body, which was the original meaning of "totalitarianism" as advocated by Mussolini.
Of course, Nazism's racial obsessions have become the prime definition of "fascism," especially on the left. Because of America's unique racial situation (a situation older than the country itself), Americans naturally are drawn to this issue. The original Fascist corporatist concept, so essential to capital-F Fascism, is scarcely noticed by any American politician or philosopher of politics.
I note that at least two of the regimes enumerated above (Franco's Spain and Salazar's Portugal) are held in high regard by even conventional American conservatives. How familiar those admirers are of the corporatist ideology I do not know.
The Nazis could hardly be called Marxist since unlike the Communists in Russia they didn’t abolish private property, didn’t abolish the Church, in fact they invented their own church, The Reich Church with Ludwig Muller as its bishop.
I see your point regarding the Mediterranean variety .Mussolini’s Italy and Franco’s Spain were not the kind of industrial societies that Germany was so it’s natural for the various sectors of these societies(tradesmen, farmers, students, etc) to be the major representatives of this form of fascism. Another glaring and deliberate tactic of the Left is to call fascism and fascists ‘’right wing’’. Fascism is and always will be a creation of the Left.
Mussolini was a syndicalist, and most of these movements looked up to socialist theorist Georges Sorel as an alternative to orthodox Marxism.
Sorel's Reflections sur la Violence
was a textbook.
The Nazism-skeptical German right wing jurist, Carl Schmitt, wrote an excellent book about the anarchosyndicalist emphasis on myth and culture versus the orthodox Marxist emphasis on "science" and "historicism."
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