Socialism in action

[Supremum]

Brilliant comeback.

That wasn't an idle comment. Freedom is literally homosexual.

No, that's not a point. You are pretending that 12 independent health insurance companies will not compete against each other for your business but are really one powerful entity like a government agency.

You have a naive view of the world. What happens in reality?

That's a false comparison typical of shallow thinking.

I didn't realize I was in the company of such big brains.

1. Learn to argue without flying off in every direction.

This wasn't just a random direction to fly off in. Conservatives and libertarians, for whatever reason, have trouble understanding the role that social dynamics play even in economic life. Your ideal economic landscape itself relies on a certain social substrate to function. You need healthy families, a common understanding of morality, similar social expectations for men and women, etc...
These are all things Marxists want to destroy, not fascists. You and I would agree probably on most economic matters, but family and God come first. This is something that, for all their faults, the fascists and national socialists understood.

2. Liberals want control of every detail of life to shape and manage thinking from cradle to grave and eventually create zombies without the power or will to resist. Outward violence is delayed for another day when complete control is reached. For now it is enough to teach young girls they have the right to terminate life, to encourage the false freedom of immorality, to stifle freedom of speech, to stifle freedom of religion and thought, to rewrite history and corner the education system, to incite anarchy, to soften borders, to attack the constitution, to abandon inner cities...the list goes on.

I completely agree, except about the binder cities thing. They just want to weaponize them against the new Kulaks.0

You can't have control and liberty at the same time. History proves that illusive dream to be just another fake news item.

Is freedom to do heroine and engage in homosexual activity good or bad? If say bad. Good vs bad control is a matter of degree, not absolutes. I'd say that "controlling" people by not allowing these things is actually liberating. People need to be liberated from their own appetites.

Fascism
The only official definition of Fascism comes from Benito Mussolini

Well, Oswald Moseley had his own take. There's not much to disagree with in this synopsis, but I'd say that this:

The use of militarism was implied only as a means to accomplish one of the three above principles

Slightly misses the point. Fascists view(ed) struggle and conflict as the natural state of man, and saw the state as the only, or best, conduit for it. Anyways, The Doctrine of Fascism is pretty short. I'm not sure why it even needs a synopsis.

 

[Supremum]

It is common to believe that Nazi Germany was a form of capitalism

I know I keep using this line, but no one with a brain thinks this. (Schmernie Schmanders might, but he's a moron.) The whole point of early 20th century radical-reactionary movements is that they're neither capitalist nor communist. If you find yourself in conversation about these movements and the first thing you mention is economics, then you're missing the point. These aren't economic ideologies. They are, first and foremost, anti-materialistic. If you went to an Italian fascist in 1934 to complain about policy not maximizing GDP, he'd just laugh in your face.

which is what the communists and marxists have claimed because they did not want to be associated with Hitler.

Not should they want to, he built an entire ideology around killing them.

The basis for this was the fact that most industries in Nazi Germany appeared to be left in private hands.


But private ownership of the means of production existed in name only under the Nazis and the actual substance of ownership resided in the German government. It was the German government and not private owners that exercised all of the actual powers of ownership. The state decided what was to be produced, in what quantity, by what methods, and to whom it was to be sold, as well as what prices would be charged and the salaries that would be paid. They also decided what profit the private owners would receive.

This was de facto government ownership adhering to the basic collectivist principles of the Nazis that the common good comes before the private good and the individual exists as a means to the ends of the State.

These things are true for any authoritarian system though. Do you think the Qin Dynasty was socialist? Or Elizabethan England? If you're searching for the ancap paradise, I'm pretty sure medieval Iceland is your only bet.

This is nothing less than full-blown socialism.

(It isn't)

edit:
Also, this dude's pretty funny, but I'm not sure how to embed YouTube on here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmPwwt2OtTc

 

[ok doser]

I'm not sure how to embed YouTube on here:

 

[Right Divider]

You don't dialog at all. You make childish, unfounded statements and don't support them.

My statements are neither childish nor unfounded. So that makes you a liar as well.

Please read this book and learn something: https://www.amazon.com/Real-Lincoln-Abraham-Agenda-Unnecessary/dp/0761526463

 

[northwye]

"This is true. Read Gramsci on the subject. Workers are too conservative in the U.S. for a real communist revolution, so he wanted to have a student's revolution instead.(I might be thinking of Marcuse)."

What was beginning to show in the seventies, during the Counterculture,was that the majority of the followers of Frankfurt School Transformational Marxism was major American University professors and students, not the mass of working class Americans. Probably the division between the Urban Center Blue areas and the "Redneck" Heartland Red Areas began back them.

I was there when the university students and some faculty went marching down the streets chanting "Ho Ho Ho Chi Minh, the NLF is gonna win!" Or, sometimes "Hey, Hey LBJ, how many kids did you kill today"

Marcuse's book, “Eros And Civilization” Helped Jumpstart the following of Transformational Marxism by the university students and professors ..

 

[7djengo7]

You're exactly right to say that fascism "isn't just a collection of stuff liberals and communists don't like"! For, indeed, fascism is a collection of stuff liberals and communists truly love, and desire to implement, as far as they can.

Really? You think liberals want to pull prostitutes off the streets and punish the people who forced them into prostitution?

I do not know whether any liberals want to do that, or not. What (if anything) is your point, though? You may as well have asked, "Really? You think liberals like to drink alcoholic beverages?"

You think liberals want to end the widespread dissemination of pornography?

I do not know whether any liberals want to do that, or not. Do you think absolutely no liberals want to do that?

Say what you will about the national socialists, but this whole transgender reassignment surgery thing started in Berlin in the 1920s.

Interesting to note. I would have a difficult time doubting that.

And guess what? The SA put a stop to it.

To what end? What would you say was their motivation to do so?

They beat the pervert Magnus Hirschfeld within an inch of his life and set fire to all of his "work."

To what end? What would you say was their motivation to do so?

Would liberals like that?

Would liberals like what? That the SA beat the pervert Magnus Hirschfeld within an inch of his life, etc.? I do not know whether any liberals would like that. Would you say that liberals qua liberals are necessarily debarred from liking that? Would you say that "Thou shalt not beat any man within an inch of is life" is a tenet of liberalism?

Were the Nazis "liberal" like that?

Were the Nazis "liberal" like what?

And, by putting quotes (" ") around the word, 'liberal', do you mean pseudo-liberal--that is, non-liberal? Are you asking, "Were the Nazis non-liberal like that?

 

[The Horn]

Hitler's National Socialism WAS fascism . It wasn't even socialism . The same way North Korea is called "The people's democratic republic of North Korea ", and the former east Germany was called "The German Democratic republic ". It was a totalitarian communist dictatorship and its leaders were puppets of the late Soviet Union .

 

[Gary K]

Hitler's National Socialism WAS fascism . It wasn't even socialism . The same way North Korea is called "The people's democratic republic of North Korea ", and the former east Germany was called "The German Democratic republic ". It was a totalitarian communist dictatorship and its leaders were puppets of the late Soviet Union .

As usual, you have nothing but assertions. You give nothing but your opinion with no supporting evidence whatsover.

Here'a little info for you from people who was a leading socialists/communists in their day.

In recent years, however, the old apprehensions of the
unforeseen consequences of socialism have once more been
strongly voiced from the most unexpected quarters. Observer
after observer, in spite of the contrary expectation with which he
approached his subject, has been impressed with the extraordin-
ary similarity in many respects of the conditions under "fas-
cism" and "communism". While "progressives" in this country
and elsewhere were still deluding themselves that communism
and fascism represented opposite poles, more and more people
began to ask themselves whether these new tyrannies were not
the outcome of the same tendencies. Even communists must

have been somewhat shaken by such testimonies as that of Mr.
Max Eastman, Lenin's old friend, who found himself compelled
to admit that "instead of being better, Stalinism is worse than
fascism, more ruthless, barbarous, unjust, immoral, anti-
democratic, unredeemed by any hope or scruple", and that it is
"better described as superfascist"; and when we find the same
author recognising that "Stalinism is socialism, in the sense of
being an inevitable although unforeseen political accompani-
ment of the nationalisation and collectivisation which he had
relied upon as part of his plan for erecting a classless society", 1
his conclusion clearly achieves wider significance.
Mr. Eastman's case is perhaps the most remarkable, yet he is by
no means the first or the only sympathetic observer of the Rus-
sian experiment to form similar conclusions. Several years earlier
Mr. W H. Chamberlin, who in twelve years in Russia as an Amer-
ican correspondent had seen all his ideals shattered, summed up
the conclusions of his studies there and in Germany and Italy in
the statement that "Socialism is certain to prove, in the begin-
ning at least, the road NOT to freedom, but to dictatorship and
counter-dictatorships, to civil war of the fiercest kind. Socialism
achieved and maintained by democratic means seems definitely
to belong to the world of utopias."2 Similarly a British writer, Mr.
F. A. Voigt, after many years of close observation of develop-
ments in Europe as a foreign correspondent, concludes that
"Marxism has led to Fascism and National-Socialism, because, in
all essentials, it is Fascism and National Socialism".

The above quote comes from Friedrich Hayek's book The Road to Serfdom pp. 27,28. As you can see he documents the fact, admitted by socialists themselves, that socialism, communism, and fascism are all one and the same.

 

[Gary K]

Here is more socialism in action. It is the combination of government and business both pushing the same agenda. It magnifies the power to suppress individualism and personal liberty far beyond what any government in the past has been able to do.

[h=2]Fast Company has caught on to what Breitbart News has been highlighting for some time: that the Big Tech Masters of the Universe are developing systems to monitor and regulate personal behavior that closely resemble China’s totalitarian “social credit” system.[/h] The “social credit” system assigns all Chinese citizens a “social credit score.” A citizen’s score drops if he engages in a range of disfavored activities, ranging from littering to supporting political dissidents.
Citizens whose score drops low enough can find themselves subject to strict punishment, including bans from the use of public transport, exclusion from top jobs, and prohibitions on their children attending top-rated schools.
This may sound alien and Orwellian, but as Fast Company notes, Silicon Valley is bringing a version of this grim reality to America.


Via Fast Company:

Many Westerners are disturbed by what they read about China’s social credit system. But such systems, it turns out, are not unique to China. A parallel system is developing in the United States, in part as the result of Silicon Valley and technology-industry user policies, and in part by surveillance of social media activity by private companies.
​

The articles goes on to note a range of ways in which western citizens are being systematically rated, and in some cases excluded, by corporate America. These include insurance companies scanning the social media feeds of applicants, an app called “PatronScan,” that logs the face and name of troublesome bar and restaurant clientele, and the growing tendency of services like Airbnb, Uber, and WhatsApp to ban users for arbitrary reasons.
The comparison to China’s social credit system is similar to the one this reporter made on Breitbart News Daily in June:

The rest of this article can be read at the following link. https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2019...lding-a-communist-style-social-credit-system/

Remember, socialism is the fusion of government and business giving them control over every aspect of our lives. Add to that potent mixture of power the technology to surviel every move you make, what you read, what you say, any where and at all times, and the control possible is off the charts scary. It makes what the USSR and China did in the past look really mild.

 

[Gary K]

If you could name even one thing that Trump has done, or is trying to do, that resembles the actions of any fascist leader of the past, you might have a leg to stand on. As it is, you are just completely deceived by the junk you have been fed. There is no such thing as a right wing fascist. Fascism is socialism - that's why they called it the German Nationalist Socialist Party. Mussolini was a revolutionary socialist/communist who led the upstart National Fascist Party in Italy.

Ask yourself a question. If he is an extremist fascist, why would Donald Trump, who basically has everything, want to lead a country who's laws, by your own admission, are designed to keep any president from becoming a dictator? I guess you think that was a bit of an oversight on his part? Maybe he's sitting at home right now thinking; "Darn, I missed that part!! How could I be so stupid?"

If you really want to defeat Trump in 2020 you had better get your party to stop saying things that just don't compute with the average American citizen. Open borders, medicare for all, free university, fascism, racism will lose the election big time. But I guess that's what the Democrats are heading for.

Please note the following:

Prior to the Civil War there were 4 million slaves in America. They were all owned by Democrats.
As racism declined in the South, it became more and more Republican which it mostly is now.

Most people today believe that the civil rights movement in the 1960's was led by the Democrats and opposed by the Republicans. The opposite is actually true. More Republicans proportionally voted for all the civil rights laws than Democrats. The Civil Rights Act of 1964; the Voting Rights Act of 1965; and the fair housing bill of 1968 were all passed because the Republicans passed them through.

The new racial supremacy in America comes from the Democrats who do not want any and all minorities to have an equal chance; they want them to have a greater than equal chance. Why? Because (as the unstated meme says) they are too weak to make it any other way. They continue to find ways to insult minorities. There are many in those minorities who are waking up to this problem. The same is true of those at the southern border and the American native populations.

Do you really want equality for all or do you think that some are more deserving than others? The constitution that keeps any president from becoming a dictator is the very thing that Republicans are dedicated to protecting and Democrats are always attacking.

As to what I bolded, I agree. Policies such as affirmative action are based entirely on racist ideas. The idea behind the policy is that a black person just doesn't have the intellectual wherewithal to compete with a white person. Thus, the educators make sure they don't by giving them the same grade a white person earns for inferior work. That puts a minority in a position where when he/she graduates they have learned less than their fellow white students and are less prepared for entry into the work force. Which makes sure they will earn less money in a competitive world.

Thomas Sowell and Walter E. Williams, both old men now, have both stated that they were very glad to go through their educational years before affirmative action was put in place. Why? Because the policy would have harmed them. They way it was they were required to do the same work to get the same grades as a white student and they both count that as a blessing, not as discrimination. And both men have become outstanding voices and influences in the black community, and the nation as well.

As usual the Democrats scream racism while they are the ones most guilty of it. It's their usual projection, projection, projection. Everything they accuse others of doing is what they themselves are guilty of doing.

 

[Supremum]

Point of personal privilege. Point of personal privilege. Supremum, Denver DSA, he/him

I do not know whether any liberals want to do that, or not.

Inclusion and tolerance aren't the principle of motion for the major left wing movements in the country now? Do you know who "Desmond is Amazing" is?

What (if anything) is your point, though? You may as well have asked, "Really? You think liberals like to drink alcoholic beverages?"

I think I made my point earlier, you can go back to read it if you want. It just seems sometime that right wingers don't realize that they're allowed to disagree with the left on more than just economics.

Interesting to note. I would have a difficult time doubting that.

A quick Google search could remove all doubt.

To what end? What would you say was their motivation to do so?

To what end? What would you say was their motivation to do so?

Seriously? They burned pedophilia pornography and instructions on how to graft pig genitalia onto mutilated mentally ill men, and you wonder about their motives? They also burned communist newsletters and pamphlets, but I'm sure those are just unrelated, right? RIGHT?

 

[7djengo7]

Say what you will about the national socialists, but this whole transgender reassignment surgery thing started in Berlin in the 1920s. And guess what? The SA put a stop to it.

To what end? What would you say was their motivation to do so?

You did not answer this question. What would you say was their motivation to do so?

They beat the pervert Magnus Hirschfeld within an inch of his life and set fire to all of his "work."

To what end? What would you say was their motivation to do so?

You did not answer this question. What would you say was their motivation to do so?

Inclusion and tolerance aren't the principle of motion for the major left wing movements in the country now?

Are you trying to tell me that the meaningless words, "inclusion" and "tolerance"--mere parrotspeak--are "the principle of motion for the major left wing movements in the country now"? If not, then what (if anything) are you trying to tell me?

I think I made my point earlier, you can go back to read it if you want.

I do not see that you made a point, and, if you think you did, it seems you prefer to keep it to yourself.

To what end? What would you say was their motivation to do so?

Seriously? They burned pedophilia pornography and instructions on how to graft pig genitalia onto mutilated mentally ill men, and you wonder about their motives?

Perhaps they did burn such. If it's true, I make no apology to you for having not been aware of it, nor for having not read up on it. Nor do I take your word for it. But you, at least, are saying that they did burn such. So, since you're saying that they did, then what would you say motivated them to do so?

For my part--supposing (at least for the sake of argument) that the SA did, in fact, burn such infinitely burn-worthy, vile, damnable, Satanic trash--I could sooner imagine that such incineration would have been more or less eagerly, dutifully carried out by lower level SA men out of real conscience and natural repulsion than that it would have been spearheaded by SA leadership on account of any moral concern, or hatred for the heinous nature of the tinder. And, that consideration prompts me to hone my question as follows:

If you're saying that the movers and shakers at the top of the SA directed the low-level, orders-following (and, perhaps (for all I know), mainly church-going) SA muscle to burn such trash, then what would you say motivated these leaders to so order?

They also burned communist newsletters and pamphlets, but I'm sure those are just unrelated, right? RIGHT?

Unrelated to what?

Oh, by the way, did the SA leadership direct the burning of Hebrew Bibles?

 

[rocketman]

Hitler's National Socialism WAS fascism . It wasn't even socialism .

That Statement is absolutely false, though the roots of Nazism were born out of fascism, like most socialists attempt to take power through violence, Lawlessness, anarchy, & the like but, Nazism, when it was realized as the legitimate government of Germany was called the National Socialist German Workers Party. Like other forms of socialism it was attempt to put a nationalist spin on marxist doctrine but, make no mistake it was socialism. You really need to read more on the subject Horn, I told you this in an earlier post as well, Socialism has never worked as ordered anytime or anywhere unless you consider North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela, et al. success stories...honestly the only thing that socialism accomplishes is spreading misery equally amongst all but, the ruling class. Do Your Homework Horn! Socialism in a nutshell is the State takeover of all things...including your rights! Don't be so naive to think someone can spin this mess differently...It always ends badly for those not in the rich ruling class. You now live in a free society...the world is your apple! Quit waiting for someone to hand you a chance to take a bite of it, just take it! and make it your own...it is the nature of freedom...Waiting for a handout from the master/government makes you only a slave to it.

 

[Supremum]

You did not answer this question. What would you say was their motivation to do so?

I didn't feel any need to state the obvious. You answered the question yourself.

Are you trying to tell me that the meaningless words, "inclusion" and "tolerance"--mere parrotspeak--are "the principle of motion for the major left wing movements in the country now"? If not, then what (if anything) are you trying to tell me?

That's exactly what I'm trying tell you. You can add "diversity" to that, as well.

I do not see that you made a point, and, if you think you did, it seems you prefer to keep it to yourself.

I addressed it here:

This wasn't just a random direction to fly off in. Conservatives and libertarians, for whatever reason, have trouble understanding the role that social dynamics play even in economic life. Your ideal economic landscape itself relies on a certain social substrate to function. You need healthy families, a common understanding of morality, similar social expectations for men and women, etc...
These are all things Marxists want to destroy, not fascists. You and I would agree probably on most economic matters, but family and God come first. This is something that, for all their faults, the fascists and national socialists understood.

Perhaps they did burn such. If it's true, I make no apology to you for having not been aware of it, nor for having not read up on it. Nor do I take your word for it.

A lot of people don't know about it, so don't feel foolish.
https://hornet.com/stories/nazis-trans-rights
There are also wiki pages on Hirschfeld and the Institute of Sexology.

But you, at least, are saying that they did burn such. So, since you're saying that they did, then what would you say motivated them to do so?

A healthy disgust response to degeneracy.

For my part--supposing (at least for the sake of argument) that the SA did, in fact, burn such infinitely burn-worthy, vile, damnable, Satanic trash--I could sooner imagine that such incineration would have been more or less eagerly, dutifully carried out by lower level SA men out of real conscience and natural repulsion than that it would have been spearheaded by SA leadership on account of any moral concern, or hatred for the heinous nature of the tinder.

For the record, I consider the men who did this to be heroes.

And, that consideration prompts me to hone my question as follows:

If you're saying that the movers and shakers at the top of the SA directed the low-level, orders-following (and, perhaps (for all I know), mainly church-going) SA muscle to burn such trash, then what would you say motivated these leaders to so order?

I have no reason to believe that their motivations are any different than those of the men they lead, and no different than your or my motivations in opposing it now.
It just strikes me as bizarre that people believe in these cartoons of the national socialists. There's enough actual bizarre, heinous stuff that they did that you don't have to impugn literally everything they ever did.

Unrelated to what?

Oh, by the way, did the SA leadership direct the burning of Hebrew Bibles?

Unrelated to their burning of degenerate trash. It wasn't. Family destroying garbage and communism go hand-in-hand.
If you're referring to Kristallnacht, then no, they didn't. During that debacle the SA was actually ordered to protect many Jewish businesses and buildings. Those that engaged in vandalism were tried and, if convicted, expelled.

Like other forms of socialism it was attempt to put a nationalist spin on marxist doctrine

Sweet Jesus have mercy on us sinners. No, fascism and national socialism were explicit, vigorous rejections of Marxist doctrines.

Have any of you read a book that wasn't written by Dinesh d'Souza?

 

[George Affleck]

One of the difficulties here is that it has been suggested that fascism borrows from the left or from the right as it deems necessary to fulfill it's goals and that it is really an entity that is not anywhere on the line between left and right on the political spectrum. This is patently false.

The whole point of having a line at all is to place all political/economic entities somewhere on the line for purposes of understanding underlying principles. To suggest that any exist outside the line, off the charts, is to negate the purpose and function of the line entirely.

Fascism, due to its total governmental subjugation of personal goals in favor of the collective goal of domination, lies squarely on the left and rivals communism in socialist controlling goals. The difference between them is that communism is economically driven and fascism is politically driven.

 

[Gary K]

I didn't feel any need to state the obvious. You answered the question yourself.




That's exactly what I'm trying tell you. You can add "diversity" to that, as well.




I addressed it here:



A lot of people don't know about it, so don't feel foolish.
https://hornet.com/stories/nazis-trans-rights
There are also wiki pages on Hirschfeld and the Institute of Sexology.


A healthy disgust response to degeneracy.


For the record, I consider the men who did this to be heroes.


I have no reason to believe that their motivations are any different than those of the men they lead, and no different than your or my motivations in opposing it now.
It just strikes me as bizarre that people believe in these cartoons of the national socialists. There's enough actual bizarre, heinous stuff that they did that you don't have to impugn literally everything they ever did.


Unrelated to their burning of degenerate trash. It wasn't. Family destroying garbage and communism go hand-in-hand.
If you're referring to Kristallnacht, then no, they didn't. During that debacle the SA was actually ordered to protect many Jewish businesses and buildings. Those that engaged in vandalism were tried and, if convicted, expelled.


Sweet Jesus have mercy on us sinners. No, fascism and national socialism were explicit, vigorous rejections of Marxist doctrines.

Have any of you read a book that wasn't written by Dinesh d'Souza?

Your ignorance of history is astounding. It was marxists who paved the way for Hitler. They pushed his ideas and policies. As someone who claims to be a former Libertarian and to have read Hayek your claims are astounding. The following quote comes from the beginning of the chapter The Socialist Roots of Nazism found in found in Hayek's book The Road to Serfdom.

It is a common mistake to regard National-Socialism as a mere
revolt against reason, an irrational movement without intel-
lectual background. If that were so, the movement would be
much less dangerous than it is. But nothing could be further
from the truth or more misleading. The doctrines of National-
Socialism are the culmination of a long evolution of thought, a
process in which thinkers who have had great influence far
beyond the confines of Germany have taken part. Whatever one
may think of the premises from which they started, it cannot be
denied that the men who produced the new doctrines were
powerful writers who left the impress of their ideas on the
whole of European thought. Their system was developed with
ruthless consistency. Once one accepts the premises from which
TH E ROAD TO SERFDOM
it starts, there is no escape from its logic. It is simply collectivism
freed from all traces of an individualist tradition which might
hamper its realisation.
Though in this development German thinkers have taken the
lead, they were by no means alone. Thomas Carlyle and Houston
Stewart Chamberlain, Auguste Comte and Georges Sorel are as
much a part of that continuous development as any Germans.
The development of this strand of thought within Germany has
been well traced recently by Mr. R. D. Butler in his study of The
Roots of National Socialism. But although its persistence there
through a hundred and fifty years in almost unchanged and
ever-recurring form, which emerges from that study, is rather
frightening, it is easy to exaggerate the importance these ideas
had in Germany before 1914. They were only one strand of
thought among a people then perhaps more varied in its views
than any other. And they were on the whole represented by a
small minority and held in as great contempt by the majority of
Germans as they were in other countries.
What, then, caused these views held by a reactionary minority
finally to gain the support of the great majority of Germans and
practically the whole of her youth? It was not merely the defeat,
the suffering, and the wave of nationalism which led to their
success. Still less was the cause, as so many people wish to
believe, a capitalist reaction against the advance of socialism. On
the contrary, the support which brought these ideas to power
came precisely from the socialist camp. It was certainly not
through the bourgeoisie, but rather the absence of a strong
bourgeoisie, by which they were helped to power.

Hayek goes on to list multiple Marxists who applauded, and helped, Hitler rise to power.

The connection between socialism and nationalism in Ger-
many was close from the beginning. It is significant that the most
important ancestors of National~Socialism-Fichte, Rodbertus,
and Lassall-are at the same time acknowledged fathers of social-
ism. While theoretical socialism in its Marxist form was directing
the German labour movement, the authoritarian and nationalist
element receded for a time into the background. But not for
1long. From 1914 onwards there arose from the ranks of Marxist
socialism one teacher after another who led, not the conserva-
tives and reactionaries, but the hardworking labourer and idealist
youth into the national-socialist fold. It was only thereafter that
the tide of nationalist socialism attained major importance and
rapidly grew into the Hitlerian doctrine. The war hysteria of
1914, which, just because of the German defeat, was never fully
cured, is the beginning of the modern development which pro-
duced National-Socialism, and it was largely with the assistance
of old socialists that it rose during this period.

Let's see some of the socialists pushed Nazism to power.

Perhaps the first, and in some ways the most characteristic,
representative of this development is the late Professor Werner
Sombart, whose notorious Handler und Helden (Merchants and
Heroes) appeared in 1915. Sombart had begun as a Marxian
socialist, and as late as 1909 could assert with pride that he had
devoted the greater part of his life to fighting for the ideas of Karl

174
THE ROAD TO SERFDOM
Marx. He had done as much as any man to spread socialist ideas
and anti-capitalist resentment of varying shades throughout
Germany; and if German thought became penetrated with Marx-
ian elements in a way that was true of no other country till the
Russian revolution, this was in a large measure due to Sombart.

What follows are some of Sombart's ideas. This marxist was pushing exactly what Hitler pushed.

In his war book this old socialist welcomed the "German
War" as the inevitable conflict between the commercial civilisa-
tion of England and the heroic culture of Germany. His con-
tempt for the "commercial" views of the English people, who
had lost all warlike instincts, is unlimited. Nothing is more
contemptible in his eyes than the universal striving after the
happiness of the individual; and what he describes as the leading
maxim of English morals: be just "that it may be well with thee
and that thou mayest prolong thy days upon the land" is to him
"the most infamous maxim which has ever been pronounced by
a commercial mind". The "German idea of the state" as formu-
lated by Fichte, Lassalle, and Rodbertus, is that the state is neither
founded nor formed by individuals, nor an aggregate of indi-
viduals, nor is its purpose to serve any interest of individuals. It
is a Volksgemeinschaft in which the individual has no rights but only
duties. Claims of the individual are always an outcome of the
commercial spirit. "The ideas of 1789"-Liberty, Equality
Fraternity-are characteristically commercial ideals which have
no other purpose but to secure certain advantages to individuals.

Here is a further expansion of Sombart's thinking and published ideas.

Sombart knew that the Germans were held in
contempt by other people because they regard war as sacred-
but he glories in it. To regard war as inhuman and senseless is a
product of commercial views. There is a life higher than the
individual life, the life of the people and the life of the state, and it
is the purpose of the individual to sacrifice himself for that
higher life. War is to Sombart the consummation of the heroic
view of life, and the war against England is the war against the
opposite ideal, the commercial ideal of individual freedom and
of English comfort, which in his eyes finds its most contemptible
expression in-the safety-razors found in the English trenches.

If Sombart's outburst was at the time too much even for most
Germans, another German professor arrived at essentially the
same ideas in a more moderate and more scholarly, but for that
reason even more effective, form. Professor Johann Plenge was as
great an authority on Marx as Sombart. His book on Marx und Hegel
marks the beginning of the modern Hegel-renaissance among
Marxian scholars; and there can be no doubt about the genuinely
socialist nature of the convictions with which he started. Among
his numerous war publications the most important is a small but
at the time widely discussed book with the significant title: 1789
and 1914. The Symbolic Years in the History of the Political Mind. It is
devoted to the conflict between the "Ideas of 1789", the ideal of
freedom, and the "Ideas of 1914", the ideal of organisation.
Organisation is to him, as to all socialists who derive their
socialism from a crude application of scientific ideals to the prob-
lems of society, the essence of socialism. It was, as he rightly
emphasises, the root of the socialist movement at its inception in
early nineteenth-century France. Marx and Marxism have
betrayed this basic idea of socialism by their fanatic but utopian
adherence to the abstract idea of freedom. Only now was the idea
of organisation again coming into its own, elsewhere, as wit-
nessed by the work of Mr. H. G. Wells (by whose Future in America
Professor Plenge was profoundly influenced, and whom he
describes as one of the outstanding figures of modern socialism),
but particularly in Germany, where it is best understood and most
fully realised. The war between England and Germany is therefore
really a conflict between two opposite principles. The "Economic
World War" is the third great epoch of spiritual struggle in
modern history. It is of equal importance with the Reformation
and the bourgeois revolution of liberty. It is the struggle for the
victory of the new forces born out of the advanced economic life
of the nineteenth century: socialism and organisation.

The following are direct quotes from Plenge's writings.

It is high time to recognise the fact that socialism must be
power policy, because it is to be organisation. Socialism has to
win power: it must never blindly destroy power. And the most
important and critical question for socialism in the time of war
of peoples is necessarily this: what people is pre-eminently
summoned to power, because it is the exemplary leader in the
organisation of peoples?

And he forecast all the ideas which were finally to justify
Hitler's New Order:

Just from the point of view of socialism, which is organisation,
is not an absolute right of self-determination of the peoples the
right of individualistic economic anarchy? Are we willing to
grant complete self-determination to the individual in economic
life? Consistent socialism can accord to the people a right to
incorporation only in accordance with the real distribution of
forces historically determined.

Now Hayek mentions other Germans who contributed to Hitler's rise due to their acceptance of his philosophy even though some of them expressed their agreement before Hitler was even known.

Ideas very similar to these were current in the offices of the
German raw material dictator, Walter Rathenau, who, although
he would have shuddered had he realised the consequences of his
totalitarian economics, yet deserves a considerable place in any
fuller history of the growth of Nazi ideas. Through his writings
he has probably, more than any other man, determined the eco-
nomic views of the generation which grew up in Germany dur-
ing and immediately after the last war; and some of his closest
collaborators were later to form the backbone of the staff of Goer-
ing's Five Year Plan administration. Very similar also was much of
the teaching of another former Marxist, Friedrich Naumann,
whose Mitte1europa reached probably the greatest circulation of any
war book in Germany.! But it was left to an active socialist politi-
cian, a member of the left wing of the social-democratic party in
the Reichstag, to develop these ideas most fully and to spread
them far and wide. Paul Lensch had already in earlier books
described the war as "the flight of the English bourgeoisie before
the advance of socialism", and explained how different were the
socialist ideal of freedom and the English conception. But only in
his third and most successful war book, his Three Years of World
Revolution,2 were his characteristic ideas, under the influence of
Plenge, to achieve full development. Lensch bases his argument
on an interesting and in many respects accurate historical account
of how the adoption of protection by Bismarck had made possible
in Germany a development towards that industrial concentration
and cartellisation which, from his Marxist standpoint, repre-
sented a higher state of industrial development.

It is plain that Marxists not only agreed with Hitler but helped push the very same ideas Hitler pushed. Nazism was no reaction against Marxism. It was the acceptance of Marxism's concepts.

 

[7djengo7]

You did not answer this question. What would you say was their motivation to do so?

I didn't feel any need to state the obvious. You answered the question yourself.

Again, the question I asked you was, "What would you [Supremum] say motivated them to do so?" The question I asked you was not, "What would I, 7djengo7, say motivated them to do so?"

Are you trying to tell me that the meaningless words, "inclusion" and "tolerance"--mere parrotspeak--are "the principle of motion for the major left wing movements in the country now"? If not, then what (if anything) are you trying to tell me?

That's exactly what I'm trying tell you. You can add "diversity" to that, as well.

How, exactly, are meaninglessly parroted slogan words such as "inclusion", "tolerance", "diversity", and others (might I add, "hate"), "the principle of motion for the major left wing movements in the country now"?

But, what would you say is the principle of motion motivating the clucks who adhere to "the major left wing movements in the country now" to go about mindlessly, meaninglessly parroting such slogan words (along with going about doing the other things they do)?

But you, at least, are saying that they did burn such. So, since you're saying that they did, then what would you say motivated them to do so?

A healthy disgust response to degeneracy.

Nicely worded--good phrase!

For the record, I consider the men who did this to be heroes.

So long as it was, as you say, done out of "a healthy disgust response to degeneracy", I would be quite inclined to agree with you. But, consider this: if such damnable rubbish as you say was burnt were destroyed by, say, a purely accidental structural fire that befell some building in which such rubbish happened to be stored, you wouldn't really want to say that you consider that accidental fire, or (say) the faulty wiring which caused it, to be a hero, would you? Of course not: such impersonal things had no moral motivation to burn what they burned.

I have no reason to believe that their motivations are any different than those of the men they lead, and no different than your or my motivations in opposing it now.

You just assume that the leaders of the SA ordered such burnings because of a healthy disgust response to degeneracy, on their part? I can't assume, with you, that they must have been disgusted by such rubbish, nor that, if they ordered it to be burned, they could only have done so because they thought it was the right thing to do. I simply don't see that it is necessary that they must have acted along those lines. Why do you think that they could not have ordered such burnings unless they were morally repulsed by the rubbish they ordered to be burned?

It just strikes me as bizarre that people believe in these cartoons of the national socialists. There's enough actual bizarre, heinous stuff that they did that you don't have to impugn literally everything they ever did.

I'm not impugning the burning of what you say they ordered to be burned; I'm questioning why you imagine that, in order for the SA leadership to give orders to burn such trash, it was absolutely necessary that they were morally repulsed by such trash.

Unrelated to their burning of degenerate trash. It wasn't. Family destroying garbage and communism go hand-in-hand. If you're referring to Kristallnacht, then no, they didn't. During that debacle the SA was actually ordered to protect many Jewish businesses and buildings. Those that engaged in vandalism were tried and, if convicted, expelled.

Would you say that ordering the SA to "protect many Jewish businesses and buildings" and Nazism go hand-in-hand? Would you say that expelling SA who were tried and convicted of vandalizing "many Jewish businesses and buildings" and fascism go hand-in-hand?

No, fascism and national socialism were explicit, vigorous rejections of Marxist doctrines.

What about the doctrine that it is right to "protect many Jewish businesses and buildings"? Would you say that that is a Marxist doctrine, or, would you say that it is a doctrine of fascism and national socialism?

There's enough actual bizarre, heinous stuff that they did that you don't have to impugn literally everything they ever did.

So, then, surely you won't fault me for not assuming, with you, that it must have been out of moral aversion to the bizarre, heinous materials they ordered burned, that they were motivated to order such to be burned.

And, of the actual bizarre, heinous stuff that they did, would you say that it and Nazism/fascism go hand-in-hand, like how you said that family-destroying garbage and communism go hand-in-hand? And, would you like to say that the actual, heinous stuff that (as you admit) the Nazis/fascists did should not be considered family-destroying garbage?

 

[George Affleck]

:drum: Whoops there goes:tunes:

Another Supremium
Whoops there goes:drum:

:tunes: Another Supremium

Whoops there goes:drum::tunes:

Another Supremium......plant!

:smack:

 

[Gary K]

Let's look at some more of what Hayek has to say about how socialism in general, and Marxism, created the foundation for Hitler to succeed in Germany. He has some very accurate and historical information. The following quote comes from the writings of Lensch who was mentioned at the last of my previous post. Here we see his writings directly.

(The liberals that Hayek and Lensch mention are not the so-called liberals of today. They are the classical liberals like John Stuart Mills and Adam Smith who were among the first to realize that government had to be as small as practically possible for liberty and financial freedom to exist.)

The result of Bismarck's decision of the year 1879 was that
Germany took on the role of the revolutionary; that is to say, of
a state whose position in relation to the rest of the world is that
of a representative of a higher and more advanced economic
system. Having realised this, we should perceive that in the
present World Revolution Germany represents the revolutionary,
and her greatest antagonist, England, the counter-revolutionary
side. This fact proves how little the constitution of a country,
whether it be liberal and republican or monarchic and auto-
cratic, affects the question whether, from the point of view of
historical development, that country is to be regarded as liberal
or not. Or, to put it more plainly, our conceptions of Liberalism,
Democracy, and so forth, are derived from the ideas of English
Individualism, according to which a state with a weak govern-
ment is a liberal state, and every restriction upon the freedom
of the individual is conceived as the product of autocracy and
militarism.

In Germany, the "historically appointed representative" of this higher form of economic life,

the struggle for socialism has been extraordinarily simplified,
since all the prerequisite conditions of Socialism had already
become established there. And hence it was necessarily a vital
concern of any socialist party that Germany should triumph-
antly hold her own against her enemies, and thereby be able to
fulfil her historic mission of revolutionising the world. Hence
the war of the Entente against Germany resembled the attempt
of the lower bourgeoisie of the pre-capitalistic age to prevent
the decline of their own class.

That organisation of Capital [Lensch continues] which began
unconsciously before the war, and which during the war has
been continued consciously, will be systematically continued
after the war. Not through any desire for any arts of organisa-
tion nor yet because socialism has been recognised as a higher
principle of social development. The classes who are to-day the
practical pioneers of socialism are, in theory, its avowed
opponents, or, at any rate, were so up to a short time ago.
Socialism is coming, and in fact has to some extent already
arrived, since we can no longer live without it.

The only people who still oppose this tendency are the liberals.
This class of people, who unconsciously reason from
English standards, comprises the whole educated German
bourgeoisie. Their political notions of "freedom" and "civic
right", of constitutionalism and parliamentarianism, are
derived from that individualistic conception of the world, of
which English Liberalism is a classical embodiment, and which
was adopted by the spokesmen of the German bourgeoisie in
the 'fifties, 'sixties, and 'seventies of the nineteenth century. But
these standards are old-fashioned and shattered, just as old-
fashioned English Liberalism has been shattered by this war.
What has to be done now is to get rid of these inherited polit-
ical ideas and to assist the growth of a new conception of State
and Society. I n this sphere also Socialism must present a con-
scious and determined opposition to individualism. In this
connection it is an astonishing fact that, in the so-called
"reactionary" Germany, the working classes have won for
themselves a much more solid and powerful position in the life
of the state than is the case either in England or in France.
​

Lensch follows this up with a consideration which again
contains much truth and which deserves to be pondered:

Since the Social Democrats, by the aid of this [universal] suf-
frage, occupied every post which they could obtain in the
Reichstag, the State Parliament, the municipal councils, the
courts forthe settlement oftrade disputes, the sick funds, and so
forth, they penetrated very deeply into the organism ofthe state;
but the price which they had to pay for this was that the state, in
its turn, exercised a profound influence upon the working
classes. To be sure, as the result of strenuous socialistic labours
for fifty years, the state is no longer the same as it was in the year
1867, when universal suffrage first came into operation; but
then, Social Democracy, in its turn, is no longer the same as it
was at the ti me. The state has undergone a process ofsocialisation,
and Social Democracy has undergone a process ofnationalisation.
​

It just keeps on getting plainer as Hayek outlines this history that Socialism was the entire foundation of Nazism. Nazism is socialism put into action.

 

[George Affleck]

I doubt he'll be back.