Liberal Democracy

Liberal Democracy
The Free State

Tuesday, January 3, 2012

Liberty In Our Time: George Reisman- 'Why Nazism Was Socialism and Why Socialism is Totalitarian'

Source:Liberty In Our Time- George Reisman giving a lecture in 2010 about Nazism.

"Lecture presented by George Reisman at the Ludwig von Mises Institute event "The Economics of Fascism," held at Mises Institute, Auburn, Alabama; 7-8 October 2005. The senior and adjunct faculty of the Institute discuss the history, theory, and contemporary meaning of the fascist temptation, and what the Austrian economists are doing to combat it." 


"Nazism (/ˈnɑːtsiɪzəm, ˈnæt-/ NA(H)T-see-iz-əm),[1] the common name in English for National Socialism (German: Nationalsozialismus, German: [natsi̯oˈnaːlzotsi̯aˌlɪsmʊs] (audio speaker iconlisten)), is the ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, NSDAP; or National Socialist German Workers' Party in English) in Nazi Germany. During Hitler's rise to power in 1930s Europe, it was frequently referred to as Hitlerism. The later related term "neo-Nazism" is applied to other far-right groups with similar ideas which formed after the collapse of the Nazi regime.

Nazism is a form of fascism,[2][3][4][5] with disdain for liberal democracy and the parliamentary system. It incorporates fervent antisemitism, anti-communism, scientific racism, and the use of eugenics into its creed. Its extreme nationalism originated in pan-Germanism and the ethno-nationalist neopagan Völkisch movement which had been a prominent aspect of German nationalism since the late 19th century, and it was strongly influenced by the Freikorps paramilitary groups that emerged after Germany's defeat in World War I, from which came the party's underlying "cult of violence".[6] Nazism subscribed to pseudo-scientific theories of a racial hierarchy[7] and social Darwinism, identifying the Germans as a part of what the Nazis regarded as an Aryan or Nordic master race.[8] It aimed to overcome social divisions and create a homogeneous German society based on racial purity which represented a people's community (Volksgemeinschaft). The Nazis aimed to unite all Germans living in historically German territory, as well as gain additional lands for German expansion under the doctrine of Lebensraum and exclude those whom they deemed either Community Aliens or "inferior" races.

The term "National Socialism" arose out of attempts to create a nationalist redefinition of socialism, as an alternative to both Marxist international socialism and free-market capitalism. Nazism rejected the Marxist concepts of class conflict and universal equality, opposed cosmopolitan internationalism, and sought to convince all parts of the new German society to subordinate their personal interests to the "common good", accepting political interests as the main priority of economic organisation,[9] which tended to match the general outlook of collectivism or communitarianism rather than economic socialism. The Nazi Party's precursor, the pan-German nationalist and antisemitic German Workers' Party (DAP), was founded on 5 January 1919. By the early 1920s, the party was renamed the National Socialist German Workers' Party to attract workers away from left-wing parties such as the Social Democrats (SPD) and the Communists (KPD), and Adolf Hitler assumed control of the organisation. The National Socialist Program, or "25 Points", was adopted in 1920 and called for a united Greater Germany that would deny citizenship to Jews or those of Jewish descent, while also supporting land reform and the nationalisation of some industries. In Mein Kampf, literally "My Struggle", published in 1925–1926, Hitler outlined the antisemitism and anti-communism at the heart of his political philosophy as well as his disdain for representative democracy and his belief in Germany's right to territorial expansion." 

From Wikipedia 

"Socialism is a political, social, and economic philosophy encompassing a range of economic and social systems characterised by social ownership[1][2][3][4] of the means of production,[5][6][7][8] as opposed to private ownership.[4][9][10] It includes the political theories and movements associated with such systems.[11] Social ownership can be public, collective, or cooperative.[12] While no single definition encapsulates the many types of socialism,[13] social ownership is the one common element.[1][9][10] Socialisms vary based on the role of markets and planning in resource allocation, on the structure of management in organizations, and from below or from above approaches, with some socialists favouring a party, state, or technocratic-driven approach. Socialists disagree on whether government, particularly existing government, is the correct vehicle for change.[14][15]

Socialist systems are divided into non-market and market forms.[16] Non-market socialism substitutes factor markets and often money with integrated economic planning and engineering or technical criteria based on calculation performed in-kind, thereby producing a different economic mechanism that functions according to different economic laws and dynamics than those of capitalism.[17][18][19][20] A non-market socialist system seeks to eliminate the perceived inefficiencies, irrationalities, and unpredictability, and crises that socialists traditionally associate with capital accumulation and the profit system in capitalism.[21][22][23][24] The socialist calculation debate, originated by the economic calculation problem,[25][26] concerns the feasibility and methods of resource allocation for a planned socialist system.[27][28][29] By contrast, market socialism retains the use of monetary prices, factor markets and in some cases the profit motive, with respect to the operation of socially owned enterprises and the allocation of capital goods between them. Profits generated by these firms would be controlled directly by the workforce of each firm or accrue to society at large in the form of a social dividend.[30][31][32] Anarchism and libertarian socialism oppose the use of the state as a means to establish socialism, favouring decentralisation above all, whether to establish non-market socialism or market socialism." 

From Wikipedia 

This is an interesting debate to about what is Nazism and is it left-wing or right-wing. True, Nazis are very populist when it comes to economic policy and the German National Socialist Party in the 1930s (or Nazi Party) believed in national ownership of the national economy. But we're obviously not talking about Social Democrats here or even Communists. 

Nazis are right-wing Fascist-Nationalists, who believe they're the superior people and culture (meaning ethnic Germans) and that everyone in Germany whose not an ethnic-German, is anti-German and therefor not deserving of the same national and constitutional rights as ethnic German citizens of Germany. 

If you want to say that Nazis are right-wing Socialists (which obviously sounds like an Oxymoron, similar to Libertarian-Socialist) fine, because of the beliefs in state-ownership of the economy, wage and price controls and the whole Communist playbook when it comes to economic policy. But the Nazis were' very different from Communists when it came to race and ethnic relations, as well as culture, and even different from American Nationalists, because American Nationalists tend to argue that what they're doing is in the name of God and tend to claim to be very religious. Whereas Nazis are not just secular, but also believe in state Atheism, where private religion wouldn't be allowed. 

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