A rather sad overlord [DevNull puts forth his political beliefs]

Great Debates
201

My acquaintenances never use the actually use the word Marxist to describe themselves, but they sure love the tenets. I play around with my Marxist friends and random internet Marxists all the time. I had one friend who even called herself a Marxist. She was cool because she was smart enough to know what she was.

One of my favorite gags used to be to go on a political board with a name like Hillaryfan04 and spout a few lines directly from the communist manifesto… but pretty the lines up with buzz news. Like:

“They should take land that isn’t being used for anything and build houses for the poor”

(Plank 1 Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.)

Bush is always giving tax cuts to his rich buddies. They aren’t paying enough.

(Plank 2 A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.)

Some of these families never work. They just sit around and collect money from their empires. They should tax the shit out of the ultra-wealthy so they know what it is like to feel like us. They don’t pay their fair share.

(Plank 3 Abolition of all right of inheritance.)

People are too stupid to handle their own money. If Bush privatizes social security we are screwed! The WMF and World bank is screwing us too. Wolfowitz was the the biggest neoCON of them all.

(Plank 5 Centralization of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly.)

Everyone should take public transportation and Hillary is right to plan to seize the profits of the oil companies. It will make people take public transportation when the prices go up high to make up for the loss of all those profits. (New for 07!)

(Plank 6 Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the state.)

All these private corporations are too greedy. I believe Hillary will do something about them but no one else will.

(Plank 7 Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the state; the bringing into cultivation of wastelands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.)

The lefties all eat that stuff up. The missing planks are a bit tougher to get a rise out of because they are becoming outdated… and obvious to a leftie with a sharp eye. At some of the simpler boards, like Democratic Underground, you can post the whole tenet in the clear and the majority will agree with you… until one of those damn moderators figures out you are less than sincere. You can have a Karl Marx icon over there all fine and dandy (many do… that and Che) but be a bit insincere with a manifesto plank and bam… They boot you and remove your post.

202

COMMON GOOD BEFORE INDIVIDUAL GOOD

(Google it)

203

Can you name one for me? I am quite good at self-teaching when given a lead.

He was a socialist. Look it up in any history book.

COMMON GOOD BEFORE INDIVIDUAL GOOD

Google it.

204

I have half of the income I did before Bush came into office. Gasoline costs three times as much. My mortgage is slightly more. I have a ton more debt. My job was not lost to Mexicans, but possibly Indians. I’m not particularly worried about red-state hillbillies, although people driving SUVs while yakking on their cellphones do give me the willies, and I worry about the drought gripping our area although that’s not necessarily Bush’s fault… okay with you if I’m a bit nervous, your Majesty?

205

Let’s do countries first since there are 200+/-

I’ll go first -

Left-wing deceptions in country names.

By Devnull

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea
The Republic of Cuba
The People’s Republic of China
Okay, you go.

206

This sort of sophistry picked up from the remnants of the John Birch society will lose you points in any serious discussion.

The word “socialism” in the name of the NSDAP referred to a general movement in early 20th century Europe that was hardly Socialist in the manner of Marx, Owen, Luxemburg, or others. It was much more similar to the word “Democratic” that appears in so many nations expressing Marxist ideology. Following the mid-1920s, Hitler and his closest buddies further reshaped the NSDAP so that its only connection to socialisim was its name. They actually practiced an odd form of Capitalism that was not remotely Socialist. As to Left and Right: the Nazis have been identified most strongly with the political Right since before they came to power in 1933 and they have been recognized as a Right-wing organization by every historian, politician, or social scholar who has written about them for 75 years. As I alluded earlier, the only people I have ever heard try to lay the “They were socialists!” laabel on the Nazis have been Birchers and a few of their fellow-travelers who were desperate to move Hitler away from a Right-wing ideology and were willing to grasp at the historically misunderstood simple (combined) word Nationalsozialistische in a failed attempt to move him to the “other” side of the political spectrum.

207

COMMON GOOD BEFORE INDIVIDUAL GOOD

That is pretty odd Capitalism… in fact, it looks socialist.

(BTW, the caps are Hitler’s, not mine.)

Google it.

208

Don’t forget the right wing groups. You forgot the wingers:

Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy

Federici was the former head of CREA.

209

So now we are supposed to believe political rhetoric defines actual politics?
Are you asserting that the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is actually beholden to the people while exercising a Republican form of government embracing democratic ideals?
You are the one who told Der Trihs to look up Hitler’s Socialism in “any history book,” yet the best you can do to defend your position is to post a campaign slogan.

I suggest, in all seriousness, that you step away from the thread to actually read a real history book on the topic. The Nazis did perform an odd form of incestuous relations between major industrial suppliers and the government, but there was nothing resembling central planning at that level and there was no central planning at the level of the individual shopkeeper, toolshop owner, or farmer. As an outgrowth of the social upheavals of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, most of Europe had already adopted a cultural attitude regarding the services that the state should provide to the individual that would horrify a Libertarian, (thus the incorporation of “socialist” in the party name, but if you look at Nazi Germany, you will find that (for example) Messerschmitt and Focke-Wulf and Daimler were all privately held companies, not “bureaus” of the government in the manner of MiG, LaGG, or Sukhoi. You will find no five year plans for the farmers to meet or exceed.

Were there socialist elements in the nazi philosophy? Sure, in the manner of the “socialism” of France or the United Kingdom, or any other European nation in the middle of the twentieth century. However, the claim that the Nazis were “socialist” and, therefore “left wing” is simply insupportable based on facts.

210

Or as you have suggested (in violation of Google’s™ trademark property rights, you Lefty :stuck_out_tongue: ). you could use Google™ to look it up:

211

Strong suggestion: lose this rhetorical tic, quickly. It probably sounds impressive when Rush Limbaugh (or one of his pretenders) uses it to punctuate a call as he hangs up on the hapless caller, but on this forum it really isn’t helping your case. It’s called “appealing to authority,” and short of telling someone to “go look it up on Rotten.com” or “go read The Turner Diaries if you don’t believe me,” it’s pretty much the lowest form of authority to which you can pass the buck.

212

Every single word of that is a lie, including “the” and “it.”

213

Oh, I entirely believe that he was “never a leftist”. No problem with that, at all. Nosiree, that’s dandy.

214

I am not afraid of losing points.

A blanket response to the last few posts:

The socialist aspects of the Nazi Socialist party platform :

All citizens must possess equal rights and duties.

The first duty of every citizen must be to work mentally or physically.
No individual shall do any work that offends against the interest of the
community to the benefit of all.

That all unearned income, and all income that does not arise from work,
be abolished.

Since every war imposes on the people fearful sacrifices in blood and
treasure, all personal profit arising from the war must be regarded as
treason to the people. We therefore demand the total confiscation of all war
profits

We demand the nationalization of all trusts

We demand profit-sharing in large industries

We demand a generous increase in old-age pensions.

We demand the creation and maintenance of a sound middle-class, the
immediate **communalization ** of large stores which will be rented cheaply to
small tradespeople, and the strongest consideration must be given to ensure
that small traders shall deliver the supplies needed by the State, the
provinces and municipalities.

We demand an agrarian reform in accordance with our national
requirements, and the enactment of a law to expropriate the owners without
compensation of any land needed for the common purpose. The abolition of
ground rents, and the prohibition of all speculation in land.

We demand that ruthless war be waged against those who work to the
injury of the common welfare. Traitors, usurers, profiteers, etc., are to
be punished with death, regardless of creed or race.

We demand that Roman law, which serves a materialist ordering of the
world, be replaced by German common law

In order to make it possible for every capable and industrious German
to obtain higher education, and thus the opportunity to reach into positions
of leadership, the State must assume the responsibility of organizing
thoroughly the entire cultural system of the people. The curricula of all
educational establishments shall be adapted to practical life. The
conception of the State Idea (science of citizenship) must be taught in the
schools from the very beginning.* We demand that specially talented children
of poor parents, whatever their station or occupation, be educated at the
expense of the State.

The State has the duty to help raise the standard of national
health*by providing maternity welfare centers, by prohibiting juvenile
labor, by
increasing physical fitness through the introduction of compulsory games and
gymnastics, and by the greatest possible encouragement of associations
concerned with the physical education of the young.

We demand the abolition of the regular army and the creation of a
national (folk) army.

We demand that there be a legal campaign against those who propagate
deliberate political lies and disseminate them through the press. In order
to make possible the creation of a German press

Newspapers transgressing against the common welfare shall be suppressed. We
demand legal action against those tendencies in art and literature that have
a disruptive influence upon the life of our folk, and that any organizations
that offend against the foregoing demands shall be dissolved.

We demand freedom for all religious faiths in the state, insofar as they
do not endanger its existence or offend the moral and ethical sense of the
Germanic race.

The party as such represents the point of view of a positive Christianity
without binding itself to any one particular confession. It fights against
the Jewish materialist spirit within and without, and is convinced that a
lasting recovery of our folk can only come about from within on the
pinciple: COMMON GOOD BEFORE INDIVIDUAL GOOD

In order to carry out this program we demand: the creation of a strong
central authority in the State, the unconditional authority by the political
central parliament of the whole State and all its organizations.

Written by Adolf Hitler

Rhetoric becomes radical socialism at a certain point.

One of you Hitler defenders can give me a Capitalist/Individualist rundown of the man?

215

Let us not start making this personal.

216

I said Adolf Hitler was a socialist. Bernie Sanders is a socialist but Vermont isn’t.

Bernie Sanders ran on his socialist platform and won. Vermont still does not have central planning.

Things take time but because the Nazi party never completed their campaign promises, that does not mean they are not what they said they were in the first place.

I will take that Hitler was not a very successful socialist, but his platform I listed above would make Marx pop a boner.

217

(Strike original)

One of you who are defending Hitler’s reputation as a capitalist can maybe point out his capitalist platforms or possible some individual rights he may have championed… or at least tried to champion…

218

**“I absolutely insist on protecting private property… we must encourage private initiative”. ** *~~Adolph Hitler, March 24, 1942 *

Cited in “Hitler’s Secret Conversations.” Translated by Norman Cameron and R.H. Stevens. Farrar, Straus and Young, Inc. 1953. p. 294.

219

Which in no way challenges either of the two points I have made:

Campaign slogans are not reality; the actual running of Germany for the eleven years that Hilter possessed nearly absolute power did not conform to Socialist practices. Where was the German government’s takeover of Krupp, Daimler-Benz, I. G. Farben, Siemens, Volkswagen, and other major companies. In what odd way can one claim that they were actually nationalized (regardless of pre-election rhetoric)?

Europe as a region had already embraced a limited amount of Socialism throughout all of its governments; Germany, however, was pretty much on the Right-ward end of the European spectrum.
(It is something like the statements of some posters that Bill Clinton is too far to the Left that usually brings catcalls from European posters who note that the American Left is to the Right of the European Center.)

220

Capitalism has nothing whatsoever to do with championing individual rights, except for the right of the capitalist to make money.

Business has no interest in any political system as such.