Posted on 06/22/2002 10:38:56 AM PDT by freeforall
Fascists are and will forever be the absolute opposite of socialists and communists
Stryker, I don't think you have to be particularly well-read to see that this statement is false.
Fascists and socialists are and will forever be sworn enemies; but they are not and have never been absolute opposites.
Fascism and communism are both anti-liberal, anti-individual, anti-freedom. They are both scavengers picking at the carcass of faltering or failed capitalism, and in this they have a profound commonality.
The only way you can declare them to be "absolute opposites" is to absolutely discard that which they absolutely have in common, which is their disdain for the sovereignty of the individual.
It was like that in Hitler's time, with the Storm Troopers fighting with the Reds back in the 1920's. Middle-class people were so sick of the Reds raising hell that they welcomed anybody who would beat them up and make them go away (until they realized that the newcomers were just as bad)
You also assume that neo-Nazis are on the Right, rather than just being Leftists of the different color. Is there a difference between the Bloods and the Crips?
If there was a middle-class neighborhood that was getting trouble from Crips moving in, they might welcome a Hells Angels chapter. For a while.
Seriously though, perhaps the politics in not the primary.Maybe all totalitarian/authoritarian politics are a branch of Platonic collectivism which then would be the true genus.Plus we would also have to give thanks for Hegel's contribution to insaneapoliticus.
As to your logic, I don't find any. You seem to be stuck reasoning that because two different types of nation states are both powerful, they must be the same. You ignore that they engage in entirely different nation building and social engineering--one nationalizing all land and factories and inculcating into its' citizens the world view that all are equal and that nation states and governments will ultimately dissolve, and the other raising a race and its' historic symbols and institutions to worship of the eternal state while inculcating its' citizens with the idea that they are superior to all other races, and nationalizing only actual people as slaves to serve the master race.
Others in this thread have basically agreed at this point and have just worked out fine details, but you are a stubborn one Tribune. Why do you suppose Hitler put 90% of his armies on the Eastern Front and only 10% on the Western? Could it have been that the ruling class of Germany thought that Britain and the United States would ultimately see the wisdom of joining Germany in fighting communism, all three countries at that time practicing some brand of fascism, the latter two admittedly very mild.
And who controlled the means of production? The Nazis.
To do this, organized labor, and the actual socialists and communists had to be removed from the scene.
Leave labels aside for a moment. Rephrase it as "competitors to the party had to be removed from the scene." It's no different than the Soviets.
Once Hitler gained power, legally I might add, and with the financial backing of the German elite,(which you should know if you read "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" and understood it), those owners retained their ownership
How does that not make the Nazis socialist? What's the difference between co-opting a business owner to do your bidding or replacing him with a "worker's council?" It's the same result. The former's more practical and effective. Your positions seems to be that it would be a violation of socialist principals. I view it as adaptation. The ruling party can still be called a socialist.
And Hitler certainly did nationalize (using the most basic definition of the word) several industries.
Any owner in the United States that turned disloyal would have lost his ownership, .
Actually, what would have and did happen -- I'm assuming by disloyal you simply mean ignore government directives -- would be that the government would, temporarily, take over the facilities. No ownership would be lost. No concentration camp sentence would be levied.
As to your logic, I don't find any.
Well, I'm not surprised.
You seem to be stuck reasoning that because two different types of nation states are both powerful, they must be the same.
Of course not. The United States is powerful. We're neither like Nazi Germany nor the Soviet Union.
You ignore that they engage in entirely different nation building and social engineering--one nationalizing all land and factories and inculcating into its' citizens the world view that all are equal and that nation states and governments will ultimately dissolve,
Are you really a conservative? Anyway, it's occasionally interesting to consider the differences but far more useful to note the similarities -- namely that the ideologies of both nations held that the rights of the state/collective/party outweighed the rights of the individual -- including the right to his property.
Others in this thread have basically agreed at this point and have just worked out fine details, but you are a stubborn one Tribune.
I think most of the posters are agreeing with me. :-)
Why do you suppose Hitler put 90% of his armies on the Eastern Front and only 10% on the Western?
Because that's were 90 percent of the fighting was going on. The Russian front lasted from 1940 to 1945. The Western Front basically lasted for 11 months starting in June 1944.
Could it have been that the ruling class of Germany thought that Britain and the United States would ultimately see the wisdom of joining Germany in fighting communism, all three countries at that time practicing some brand of fascism, the latter two admittedly very mild.
The US, facist? You are not only not a conservative (or classic liberal if you will), you are getting silly. Ponder this -- why was Hitler's first ally the Soviet Union?
That's telling me.
Hitler did not nationalize industry.
No? You 100 percent sure?
Just one final point-- the Nazis were, without a scintilla of a doubt, socialists.
I lived through a Socialist regime in Ontario,Canada and they did not nationalize any industries either.
:-)
I like calling the Nazis socialists because:
A. They were, and
B. it really, really upsets the other socialists.
I'm waiting to see if Stryker was just bluffing and is coming back so I can tell him what industries were fully nationalized -- in the sense of the state taking actual ownership -- by Hitler.
But the idea of opposites is an interesting one. When are things opposite in nature, and when do our minds and language make them so?
The species, genus idea is an interesting one. It's also more a question of relationships and genealogies, rather than identities.
A word like "socialism" has many different definitions. In early 20th century Europe, it was a positive term. Even conservatives appealed to the "true" socialist idea. The debate here is as much about semantics as anything else.
You are a "splitter," who wants to use the word in a narrow sense. Others are "lumpers" who employ it in a more general sense. It's an argument that can't be won because it's about definitions -- axioms, rather than proofs or theorums or conjectures.
When someone says that the Incas or the ancient Egyptians were socialists, I balk. There ought to be a better word to convey similarities between the socialists of the last two centuries and ancient tyrannies.
But when someone argues that socialists are and must be democratic or egalitarian or anti-racist, I likewise disagree. This isn't based on an investigation of what self-identified socialists have actually said historically, but on present-day definitions. There have been racist and inegalitarian socialists.
In any event, Swedish Social Democrats left the control of the means of production in the hands of capitalist elites, yet they are reckoned as being on the left.
I seem to recall that in Shirer's Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, he talks about how many early members of the SA felt they had been deluded when the party did not carry out the some of the social programs it had promised to gain power. Of course not everyone can be identified with a unique point on a left-right scale, but as you say the majority of Hitler's policies place him at the far right.
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