Topic: Nazis were socialists - Change my mind - page 6. (Read 1460 times)

You already explained why Nazis aren't socialists.

You said Socialism is the collective control of large scale production.

Was there a collective control of large scale production under Nazis rule?

Answer is no. Thus they are not socialists.

I don't understand why you're not even seeing your own contradiction honestly Oo

Private ownership of the means of production existed in name only under the Nazis and that the actual substance of ownership of the means of production resided in the German government. For it was the German government and not the nominal private owners that exercised all of the substantive powers of ownership: it, not the nominal private owners, decided what was to be produced, in what quantity, by what methods, and to whom it was to be distributed, as well as what prices would be charged and what wages would be paid, and what dividends or other income the nominal private owners would be permitted to receive. The position of the alleged private owners was reduced essentially to that of government pensioners.

But they were nazis at first place. Who cares about all the rest?

We need to get to a point where we can look past labels. When you only look at one label and make connections based on that, you're stereotyping.  Its how the human brain is wired because our ancestors didn't have education and had to make quick judgements on the fly.  The last angry rhino gored someone so this angry rhino will probably gore someone type decisions.  

I think calling nazis socialists is a stretch  but its at least its debatable so what if we just concede that they are socialists? So what? It would be more precise to simply describe their systems specifically instead of with a generic label.  Why don't you lay out the things they did that you have a problem with and the things they did that you like?

 Do we hate nazis because they were socialists or because they were fascists?
Do we hate nazis because of their economic system of ownership or because of their racist social policies and goal to exterminate jews?

I would say the same about nationalism.  Was their nationalism bad because being proud of your nation and wanting to do well is inherently bad? or was it bad because of the 25 point system? or was it just a few points? or was it because they used violence to attack other nations?

In conclusion, its more clear when you are specific about what you are talking about than hiding behind general terms for which everyone has differing definitions.

Any ideology is a religion in some sence. If a common man or politician chooses to follow one, he or she accepts its rigid axioms and hierarchies and then acts like they are the truth. This is built in feature of every human being and is hard (though worth) fighting against

Any ideology is a religion in some sence. If a common man or politician chooses to follow one, he or she accepts its rigid axioms and hierarchies and then acts like they are the truth. This is built in feature of every human being and is hard (though worth) fighting against

Why would a kingdom need to have a religion?

well thats a big difference then, you could then also say a kingdom is just a dictatorship with a religion,

A nazi is just a racist commie.
I'll argument my position as a replica to the replies.

Free land, since the cancerous harm afflicting the national economy [Volkswirtschaft] as well as the economies of home, business, and even the individual folk-comrade, derives from rent charges. The indebtedness of the German soil (100 billion before the War) brings all social and economic evils in its wake: tenement buildings, housing distress, infant mortality, national epidemics, poverty, crime, growing mob mentality [Verpöbelung], and national disintegration [Volkszersetzung]. This can be remedied by means of declaring German land as state property beyond private ownership, i.e. that the sale of land and soil from private hands to private hands is in future to be barred. Land is to lose its character as a commodity. A characteristic of commodities is their replaceability. Soil, however, is irreplaceable. Anybody who wants to or has to sell can only do so to the community. The community issues land to interested parties as Zeitpacht or Erbpacht.2 Thereupon land may no longer be used to raise capital in future. It will be declared debt-free [unbelastbar]. Accordingly, a personal loan will be raised as opposed to today’s mortgage loan. All current mortgages, where it is not the case already, are to be declared non-terminable short-term direct reduction mortgages [Tilgungshypotheken], reducing the rate of interest. In this manner German land is gradually freed and a truly generous settlement is reached. Even the simplest man will once again be able to live on his own plot in his own small house. The emergence of supercapitalism derives from the previous liberalization in sale of, and yield capacity of, the soil. With free land there is no supercapitalism.

Nationalization of the monetary system. Our finances are in the hands of private individuals, particularly Jews and other international people. That is an absurdity in itself, since money is the blood of the national body of the Volk [Volkskörpers]. The state as the representative of the people can only really govern if it possesses power of disposal4 over money and finance. Today money too has been alienated from and deprived of its purpose of being a convenient means of exchange between labor and wage, goods and purchase price, between producer and consumer. Money today instead serves as a means of generating more money again and again through banking-practices and stock-jobbing, without any real work involved. Our true savings- and credit-institutes must become nationalized banks, eliminating the obscene profits of the shareholders as well as the princely salaries of the directors and the royalties of the supervisory boards. We demand a Reich Economic Council5 to examine the reestablishment of the banks and enterprises in relation to the real requirements and welfare of the community. Future creditworthiness will no longer extend to property, but to people. From this it follows that, as in the past, business will be built upon the competency, reliability, and honesty of the individual, by which the requisite tranquility and organic growth will be brought to our economy.

The stock market game is rejected as harmful and unnecessary, since trading in assets is to be prohibited. Our currency is to be redesigned. Unending interest, which has as its premise the immoral interpretation of capital’s immortality so cunningly devised by its inventors and guardians, is superseded through a service of interest payments gradually replacing the capital. This would put an end once and for all to the interest-slavery originating out of the Orient.

5. Breaking up of our large estates for the purposes of settlement, according to the yield capacity of the individual territories.

12. Protection of the German worker against foreign labour, which depresses the German worker’s wages and standard of living.

The German Socialist Party is a party of the financially-weak layers of the Volk, i.e. the workers, civil servants, shop-assistants, artisans, small-businessmen and peasants, the teachers, settlers,6 technicians. He who sees things clearly joins us without hesitation. False Jewish-socialism and the interest-economy must be as chaff before the wind.

Outline for the Founding of a
German Socialist Party
on a Jew-free and Capital-free Foundation

Merely the form of government and the men in charge have changed, while capitalism and Jewry will rear their heads higher than ever under democracy. As before, you, the German Volk, will be leeched dry, plundered and condemned to toil and worry. How did it come to this, and shall it remain this way forever? The cause of this failure lies in the fact that the struggle against these two powers has hitherto been conducted separately. Yet both are intimately connected.

Social-democracy only engages in a mock-fight against capitalism, for its leaders are Jews and capitalists!

Yet the Jew-experts1 struggle in vain against Jewry because they stand firmly on the ground of the capitalist state order, so both they and social-democracy are bound to fail.

The change required to finally establish real freedom for the German Volk is to form a German Socialist Party.

Lassalle, the founder of German social-democracy, must as a Jew have known his racial-comrades [Rassegenossen] well when he said: “A popular movement has to keep its distance from capitalists and Jews where they appear as directors and leaders, and instead pursue its own aims.”

however, the party does not want a Western-style democracy with a Jewish-plutocratic apex, but a free Peoples’ State [Volksstaat] in which capitalism and Jewry are overcome.

Until now capitalism and Jewry have stood in the way of such reforms.

being instead quite anti-capitalist and Jew-free [Judenrein]. It allows itself to be guided solely by the welfare of the whole, and strives for a far more even distribution of vital commodities and for the recovery and revival of the Germans, whose folk-strength [Volkskraft] has been so gravely afflicted. But it is not through a fresh revolution or abrupt change that new conditions will be striven for 

Ok then maybe put your definition of socialism then.

Because talking about a socialism "but not the one of Marx" would actually make the stupid argument "that was not real socialism" a valid argument you understand that?

Marx defined socialism, anyone talking today about socialism refers to Marx's idea. It's only logical to assume that when you use a word you use the most widely spread meaning of the word and not an obscure definition used 100 years ago.

Maybe that with your definition of socialism Nazis could be considered socialists, who knows?

So, one of the big reasons that Hitler had referred to this as Socialism was an attempt to sway working class voters (a large part of the German voting bloc) to his camp. As said above, the most popular socialist thinkers had been from Germany.

not just racist,

racist and nationalist.

but the questions is what are you what is the alternative?

enslaving yourself to the financial elite of the british empire?

shall the entire world be enslaved to royalty and a banking cartel?

what do you want?

And socialism was a neologism 60 years before Hitler came to power.  

You're trying to put a socialist label on NSDAP, even though the party was not completely socialist in its nature. Opposing capitalism doesn't mean you're a full socialist.
If you compare nazi socialism with soviet socialism you'll see that they're different.
Hitler did not want a class to rule over other classes like it was in other socialist republics. He wanted a nation to rule over other nations. He didn't want wealth to be distributed among the people but for the whole world to be under a single leadership and used socialism to gain support of the masses.  

A nazi is just a racist commie.
I'll argument my position as a replica to the replies.

"National Socialism", or in German; "Nationalsozialismus" is a term that was created when the Nazis(Well... I guess they weren't Nazis before they invented the term Nazi... They were DAP's, I guess) attempted to create a nationalist redefinition of "Socialism", an alternative to both classical schools of Socialism and various Liberal ideas. Nazism rejected the Marxist concept of class conflict, opposed cosmopolitan internationalism, everything we commonly associate with the modern understanding of Socialism, and sought to create a new German socialism in which individuals subordinate their personal interests to the "common good", accepting political interests as the main priority of economic organization.

In an interview with George Sylvester Viereck in 1923 Adolf Hitler himself said:

"Socialism is the science of dealing with the common weal. Communism is not Socialism. Marxism is not Socialism. The Marxians have stolen the term and confused its meaning. I shall take Socialism away from the Socialists. Socialism is an ancient Aryan, Germanic institution. Our German ancestors held certain lands in common. They cultivated the idea of the common weal. Marxism has no right to disguise itself as socialism. Socialism, unlike Marxism, does not repudiate private property. Unlike Marxism, it involves no negation of personality, and unlike Marxism, it is patriotic. We might have called ourselves the Liberal Party. We chose to call ourselves the National Socialists. We are not internationalists. Our socialism is national. We demand the fulfilment of the just claims of the productive classes by the state on the basis of race solidarity. To us state and race are one."1

And even though the term was the same as the one used by Marxists and Utopian Socialists, Hitler was not afraid to make it clear that this term was one that they had adopted, and that in their usage, it is very much the opposite of what we normally associate with Socialism. In a speech in 1938 Hitler said:

"'Socialist' I define from the word 'social; meaning in the main ‘social equity’. A Socialist is one who serves the common good without giving up his individuality or personality or the product of his personal efficiency. Our adopted term 'Socialist' has nothing to do with Marxian Socialism. Marxism is anti-property; true socialism is not.[...]"2

Why exactly Hitler choose the word Socialism, only he himself knows. But we can speculate and make qualified guesses based on our knowledge of the past. A very common theory is that it was chosen to sway working-class votes. Germany has a pretty substantial and rich Socialist tradition. The most prominent Socialist thinkers are from Germany: Marx, Engels, Kautsky, Bebel, Liebknecht the elder, Lassalle, etc. all Germans. And the Socialists were popular in the elections around the time where the term Nationalsozialismus was adopted, with the SPD and the USPD scoring around 35% of the votes in the 1920 election.34

Notes:

1:Interview with George Sylvester Viereck, 1923

2:The Speeches of Adolf Hitler

3: Kershaw, Ian (1999). Hitler 1889-1936

4: Nohlen, D & Stöver, P (2010) Elections in Europe: A data handbook,

However, they were socialists and openly advocated for socialism, just not the Marx type of socialism. They were building their own.
He's not the only socialist on the planet, he's just the one who inspired communism.