Talk:Nazism and socialism/Archive 3

message: "National Labour Law of January 20, 1934, the state would exert direct influence and control over all business employing more than twenty persons. In other words, both employers and employees were put under the control of the government." Large public works projects, 100% employment, these sorts of things are socialist Sam Spade 04:41, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Public works projects are socialist?  Under what definition?  And 100% employment was a result of the rearmament efforts. john 04:42, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: That sort of controlled economy is socialist in my eyes, as is fuedalism and mercantilism and any sort of economic controls. as I keep sayings it s the definition of socialism we are debating here, and nothing other. BTW we arn't supposed to be debating ;) Sam Spade 04:44, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)

text: yep, I would, but I'd go after FDR first ;) Sam Spade 04:46, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)

text: "Socialism is about workers control" is the biggest lie I can recall hearing in awhile. Maybe in propaganda, but try organizing a union in china Sam Spade 04:55, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: That's because worker control is expressed through means of their only true representative, the Communist Party of China.  But the point is that the ideology of communism is about worker control.  There was no interest in worker control in the ideology of Nazism.  That communism failed to live up to its ideology does not mean that the Nazis were communists. john 05:03, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)

text: Well, the Soviet Union banned independent labor unions, too.  john 05:03, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: The Soviet Union was a communist state.  Surely you are not trying to argue that it was "socialist" in a context in which one is attempting to delineate the difference - such as in an *international* encyclopedia. Sunray 17:00, 2004 Mar 30 (UTC)
Sam, you've failed to justify any of your edits. The one edit you did try to justify here blew up in your face according to your own evidence. Stop playing around unless your proposals can withstand scrutiny in TALK Formeruser-83 04:59, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)

text: I don't think anyone would dispute that the Nazi regime took a great deal of control over private industry.  It should be noted that it did this considerably less than the British, say, during World War II - the Nazis hardly mobilized for war until 1942.  Winston Churchill and socialism.  Frederick Barbarossa and socialism.  Richard III and socialism.  Cardinal Richelieu and socialism.  The Iroquois Confederacy and socialism.  Elizabeth I and socialism.  The German National People's Party and socialism.  If state involvement in the economy is all that is required to produce socialism, we should have articles on every possible historical subject and socialism. john 05:03, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: National Labour Law of January 20, 1934

message: This article is not about what I think, it's about what you guys think. The nazis themselves called themselves socialists, they fit into many standard definitions of socialism (which tend of course to be very broad, and to vary substantially) and the standard wiki policy is to call people what they call themselves. The article should prob have been deleted anyhow, or merged into socialism, but whatever. This is where we are. All I expect is for the article to be accurate and NPOV, presenting both sides fairly. That is prob done best by providing alternating talking points, as it was before the rewrite, but if you are so very confident you can make a standard article out of a contentious debate like this, so be it. It'll prob get deleted sooner or later tho, just to warn ya. Its been on VfD more than once already. Sam Spade 09:21, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Talking points do not an encyclopedia make.  Again, I welcome any contributions you can make to the question of relationships between Nazism and socialism, and adding any material on it.  However, the article as it is at present a) acknowledges that the Nazis called themselves socialist, both in their name, and occasionally in actual rhetoric; b) acknowledges that many elements of the original Nazi program were seemingly socialist; c) acknowledges that one wing of the pre-1933 Nazi party had some socialist tendencies; d) acknowledges that German conservatives, when not too busy cuddling up to the Nazis, would sometimes accuse the Nazis of being socialists; e) that the Nazi regime has sometimes been called socialist by post-1945 scholars.  If you want further points, feel free to add them, but it isn't POV for there to be more material in favor of one side than the other.  That could simply mean that there is simply more support for one side of the argument than the other, and it's certainly not NPOV to remove accurate, relevant information. john 09:28, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't disagree w any of that. Sam Spade 09:32, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: This article

message: I think I'm seeing some sweeping statements like:
#Communists are leftists.
#All socialists are leftists.
#Nazis opposed Communism.
Combining these premises in various ways, you can conclude that:
*Nazis are not leftists; therefore,
*Nazis are not socialists.
Is this the primary basis of some contributors' refusal to consider Nazism as being a form of socialism? "They can't be socialists, because they're not leftists!" --Uncle Ed 13:45, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Can we try logic?

message: "After World War I a number of extremist political groups arose in Germany, including the minuscule German Workers? party, whose spokesman was Gottfried Feder. Its program combined socialist economic ideas with rabid nationalism and opposition to democracy. The party early attracted a few disoriented war veterans, including Hermann Goering, Rudolf Hess, and Hitler. After 1920 Hitler led the party; its name was changed, and he reorganized and reoriented it, stamping it with his own personality." --Columbia Encyclopedia 
:Ed, this has been covered before on this talk page (now in archives).  I'm not sure what you are getting at.  Hitler did take over a socialist party.  He then re-oriented it as the Nazi party.  The transition was complete by the early thirties.  There are many cases worldwide of a party being taken over and re-oriented but retaining its former name.  My own personal favourite is the BC Liberal Party, "... one of the most right wing in Canada."  No one in their right mind would say that this party is liberal, yet they retain the name. Sunray 19:57, 2004 Mar 30 (UTC)
I don't know that that Drexler's German Workers' Party can be considered a genuinely socialist party, although it did certainly have "socialist economic ideas".  It was essentially an anti-capitalist middle class anti-semitic party.  Those socialist/anti-capitalist ideas remained into the National Socialist Party platform (composed 1921), but were, almost to a one, not implemented at all when the Nazis came to power.  But, at any rate, the Nazis' anti-capitalism was an anti-capitalism of the right, not of the left, and emerged out of the anti-semitic völkisch ideas of the late 19th century, rather than out of socialist thought (Hitler never even seems to have actually read Marx - rather, he seem to have mostly read right wing anti-marxist polemic). john 03:10, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I believe the lacking awareness of, or understanding of the background to, anti-capitalism might be a key to why many people, maybe particularly outside of Europe, tend to mislable many early 20th-century political positions. --Ruhrjung 09:02, 1 Apr 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Did Nazism ever have socialist elements?

message: From article:
:Since the fall of the Nazi regime, many theorists have argued that there are similarities between the government of Nazi Germany and that of Stalin's Soviet Union.  In most cases, this has not taken the form of arguing that the Nazis were socialist, but arguing that both Nazism (as an extension of anti-semitism and racialism) and Stalinism (as an extension of Marxist socialism) are forms of totalitarianism.  This view was advanced most famously by Hannah Arendt in The Origins of Totalitarianism.  However, many socialists and Marxists dispute that Stalin was in fact a true socialist and assert that Marx argued for a democratic socialist system. 
I deleted the marked sentence from the above paragraph, because "democratic socialism" implies that Marx would have opposed Soviet Communism. Yet the USSR exalted Marx, so there's a contradiction there. Which is right?
:However, many socialists dispute that Stalin's system was truly socialist. Which I now reinsert. --Ruhrjung 09:02, 1 Apr 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Perhaps the paragraph was about the mental link between nazism and socialism, as stemming from a perception that nazism is fascist (i.e., totalitarian) and that Communism (which is a manifestation of socialism) is also totalitarian. Have you been following the evolution of the fascism and Communism article? --Uncle Ed 22:10, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Marx and democracy