The point here is that the cite you have there refers to the ethical question of what to do after we detect a problem in a fetus, you may want to call it eugenics, but that is wrong, eugenics actually attempts to match the “correct” people to avoid results like having a Down syndrome baby, but for extreme conservatives now there is the societal element of race, this is not the issue in your cite. What you have in your cite is science telling parents what is coming but the most important point here is that there is no race or other societal conventions in that effort.
I mostly agree with the take that Martin Hyde has, but there are some important nits.
Actually most industrialists helped the Nazis take power, and after the banks were returned to their former owners by the Nazis (the Weimar Republic was the one that did nationalize them) this is a very peculiar “nationalization”, mostly the very few that did oppose the Nazis were the ones affected negatively by the Nazi version of nationalization, in practice industrialists really liked or tolerated the removal of the worker organizations, and the availability of slave labor.
I looked at several profiles, and didn’t see any references to liberals or conservatives. Could you link to a profile where the poster self identifies as a liberal or a conservative?
Well there is no “actually most industrialists helped the Nazis take power”, since in my same post I mentioned the industrialists helped the Nazis take power :dubious:.
But the point is, centrally directed and planned economy is a left economic sphere thing, not a right one. Lots of the big industrialists obviously like you said, enjoyed the elimination of worker organizations and slave labor. However the ones that weren’t outright nationalized were still essentially required to operate under central guidance. They were no longer politically independent or even economically independent, they weren’t independent companies like they were before but instead had to be part of the planned economy.
Further, before the Nazis took power the industrialists were important and powerful politicians. By and large few if any of them were powerful in the Nazi party. Nazification was by and large the end of the Junker / old money industrialists as independent political powers.
The business community was mostly against Nazism - in fact, most of the establishment was as firmly against them as could be. The problem was that the Nazis kept winning. And growing. Eventually, group after group felt they had no choicen but to throw in with them or the Communists, and most chose the Nazis. In all fairness, many if not most felt Hitler could be controlled or influenced, including such figures as Franz von Papen, who more or less single-handedly handed Hitler cotrol of Germany*.
In any case the business community came to the Nazis late, and were always seen as subordinate figures - defintely not a part of the leadership, nor as having much influence upon it. Like in Italian Fascism, they were allowed to keep their property, but the government controlled it and they had best comport themselves to please the Party leadership or lose it. As it would turn out, appropriations would wreck many businesses, though mostly smaller ones - the Nazis were keener than the Bolsheviks on making sure that a lack of management talent did not affect their military machine.
Nazism doesn’t have all that much to do with the established German Left, although they were more or less by default a party of the Left. They only indirectly have anything in common with, say, American Progressives. Italian Fascism is another story, and was in part inspired by Progressivism; Nazism was and is a different beast, a sort of mutant Fascism run rampant, with a rather thin ideology at best.
GIGObuster, you’re flat wrong. Fascists of several stripes got rid of Socialists and Communists to varying degrees of brutality, because because they were competition. Communists especially were in the game for the same political base as the Nazis, and the Nazis were not ineffective in claiming workers’ votes. Until they stopped voting from happening, their strength lay not in the Bourgoisie but worker - eventually even in Berlin, where they had displaced about half the Communists strongholds.
Like wise, they didn’t destroy worker organizations. They merged them with the State. You may consider this a weak reed, and of course it certainly meant workers had no protection from the state - but it’s exactly that the Communiusts did whenever they took over anyplace, and for the same reason: Once the workers had given them power, they would create an iron band tying them to the state. That this band was a slave collar, was something the workers were not supposed to admit in puublic.
*Papen was a titanic jerk, and basically did this out of sheer spite.
Well I see the slight problem, IMHO if the industrialist gets more benefits than disadvantages then it is not really a “left economic sphere thing” The big failure of the Nazis was that it was not until it was too late that Germany switched to a full militarization of their industrial base, most of the common goods industry was not disrupted by centralization until the fortunes of war turned against them.
Right out of the gate you are contradicting yourself
As I learned, sure, early the Nazis did so, but that changed after they made a deal with the industrialists, the members in the nazi leadership that were mostly coming from the worker side were disposed of, by the time workers realized they were had it was too late.
Two wrongs do not make a right, and in this case not a liberal Remember where my criticism is going to, to a poster that claimed that those are liberal ideas, the fact is that totalitarians of any stripe do hate liberalism to death.
Well I’m not going to argue the point anymore, I consider it basically settled fact that a country that is basically entirely anti-free market and engaged in massive government spending and control of the economy is very far left on any economic scale. If you want to believe otherwise I doubt any series of facts would change your mind.
But the “big failure” of the Nazis was they started wars that they had no hope of ever winning. There is literally nothing the Nazis could have done that would have beaten the combined armies of the United States, the United Kingdom, and the USSR. Maybe if they had conducted a more effective Operation Barbarossa they could have captured Moscow and knocked the Soviets out, but they were way overextended. A lot more Americans and British would have died, but there’s really no way the Germans could have held all of Europe including Russia for more than a couple years.
If you ever read about how Hitler actually financed his wars, it’s interesting to note even if everything had gone 100% to plan and they won the war, Germany was going to hit an atomic fuckstorm of economic collapse that probably would have essentially been just as bad as the worst days in Weimar.
Liberal/conservative is an outmoded form of analysis, best suited to historical debates like this one. Right now both parties are wholly owned subsidiaries of Wall Street. It’s plutocrats vs. progressives now.
If you create your own definitions that will not be a problem, I only see that most experts do not see it that way, “fascist economies were based on private property and private initiative, but these were contingent upon service to the state.”[5]
-James A. Gregor,
Except, of course, for the religious conservatives who were using the Bible to support slavery. But I imagine you will come back with the list of religious liberals who supported slavery.
And you’ve just proven me correct, your own cite says this:
So that demonstrates two things. One that the Nazis were better for industrialists than workers, but most every system it’s better to be an industrialist than a worker bee. But what it also demonstrates is the central government control, the massive subsidy to firms that are unprofitable, and later in that same cite of yours it even mentions how fascism discourages international trade in favor of autarky, or complete economic self-reliance.
On the right/left scale of economic policies, free market capitalism is on the right, state owned factors of production and such as seen in pure Soviet style communism is on the far left. Nazism wouldn’t fall as far left as true communism, but as your own cite suggests, with socialization of corporate losses, discouragement of any outside trade (in favor of autarky), and strong central control of all factors of production (while still allowing for private ownership) is still on the left side of that scale, not the right.
There were some pro-Nazi individuals in 1930s America, but their size is dramatically overestimated. Most Americans left and right did not like Nazis at any point in time.
There was more clamor for isolationism from conservatives than from liberals, but up until Pearl Harbor both liberals and conservatives were very much opposed to war. That is why Roosevelt, who was pro-war very early on, was unable to get a DOW prior to us being attacked, he did not even have sufficient support in his own party for intervention.
Anyway, as I said and have demonstrated, the left/right economic axis in a model like the Political Compass would put pure laissez-faire capitalism on the far right, and pure command economies in which all factors of production are owned by the state on the far left. The Nazis were a command economy with significant government ownership of factors of production but also an allowance for significant private ownership of factors of production–however private or publicly owned the government controlled to its own ends all factors of production regardless of ownership. Any industrialist that stepped out of line (see again: Fritz Thyssen, who was probably the first big industrialist to support Hitler, when he bucked against the extremism of the Nazis he was imprisoned and his firm nationalized outright–showing any illusions an industrialist might have about independence of action was just that in Nazi Germany.)
How exactly do you define liberal/conservative in 19th century America?
Republicans were anti-slavery from their founding in the 1850s but were also very pro-manufacturing and pro-business (something they share in common with modern day Republicans.)
After the war the Republicans were responsible for all the civil rights amendments and for protecting the interests of blacks in the reconstruction South (until being driven out by “redeemer” governments after reconstruction.) However in the post war period Republicans were also responsible for extreme corruption and getting in bed with business interests, and were also the big drivers for various overseas adventurism and the supporters of “American imperialism.” So I don’t know how easily you can resolve that set of political beliefs to modern day “liberal” and “conservative” labels.
Modern day self-identified American liberals would support civil rights, but oppose private industry and military adventurism.
“**On the whole, except in a few cases, nationalization of the economy of the fascist states developed on the ***basis *of private property and of private initiative, but it was subordinated to the tasks of the state As part of the relations between workers and employers fascism guided by the principles of social Darwinism”
It still looks like you only push what you think it was, even Nazis thought that what they were doing was not what the right or the left wanted, but a different way of doing things, but as the old saying goes: by their fruits we shall know them, and in Europe all do know that Fascism is the far right.
If you note my original point it was that to understand Nazism you have to look at a two axis scale of left/right economic policies and authoritarian/libertarian social/“freedom” policies. So I was not even wanting to use liberal/conservative in reference to the Nazis at all.
In a two axis approach it’s easy to show liberals who are not synonymous with leftists, and that’s where parties like the Liberal Democrats in the UK fall in the spectrum. In a single axis you’re forced to make weird judgment calls when you have a socially liberal / economically conservative party or a socially conservative / economically liberal party. By not even using liberal / conservative but instead left / right (with left being greater social control or state control of the economy) you can get much better granularity.
It doesn’t matter how in bed the Nazis were with industrialists or how much private property they allowed.
They exercised central planning of the economy, they socialized corporate losses and they did their best to limit any international trade. Those are not economic right policies, but economic left policies. If you want to try and label them liberal or conservative fine, all I’m saying is those are left policies, not right policies. And the terms liberal / conservative are ill suited for groups like the Nazis or even Stalinists.
Liberal and conservative has nothing to do with Democrats and Republicans. The entire party system is topsy turvy. The people that were once conservative Democrats in the south are now conservative Republicans. There is a pretty solid line connecting conservatives: pro-slavery->pro Jim Crow->anti-civil rights for blacks->anti-civil rights for women->anti-civil rights for gays.
Your clear and unambiguous impliciation is that the Nazis viewed Communists as “Left” parties and destroyed them because of differences. They fought the Left as competition, which is a rather different matter.
You learned poorly. The Nazis reigned in (but did not destroy) the hardline S.A., but more because they were rebelling against Hitler’s authority and possibly considering a coup attempt. The Nazis most definitely did not dispose of “the Nazi leadership that were mostly the coming from the worker side”. Most Nazi leaders were relatively low-class men, of modest roots and moderate education - exactly the lower-middle class/upper worker class base they appealed to. More to the point, when they finally did get last-minute backing from industrial and mercantile leaders, it was after they had already become the largest and most powerful Party in Germany, and none of these group excercised any authority within the later Reich.
Workers didn’t realize they were had at all. The regime held their loyalty all through the war, and even when some were abused believed Nazism was a good system.
You’re mixing two distinct definitions of liberal.
Both American parties, including almost every Democrat and Republican* would be a classical liberal group, who believe in free market economics and private property, a free and more-or-less aglitarian society, democratic institutions, and republican constitutional government based on the consent of the governed. American politics twere ever thus. These kinds of groups (including some Socialists) were pushed aside by the Nazis, but were not especially repressed aside from no longer having a political say.
The Nazis also destroyed or coopted every group they could find who stood against them. The military, almost the last significant element of German conservative sentiment, was put to heel (and did in fact try to oust the Nazis repeatedly). Liberal organization (in the sense of Leftism) were absorbed or obliterated. Quite a few Nazis were in fact former Communists. (Post-war, quite a few Communists were former Nazis, but that was a more complicated issue as both east and west Germany needed people to run things).
*There are a few oddballs I could think of who might not count, but this covers everybody Harry Reid to Boehner to weird outsiders like Lyndon LaRouche.
I’m not sure exactly how seriously or tongue-in-cheek this is meant, but overall neither the American Left nor Right was overly fond of the Nazis, but there were numerous leftist voices who favored them. In fact, intellectuals as a group were usually for fascism, although they often considered Nazism to be a rather degenerate form of it. Orson Welles famously called for “enlightened Nazis,” and the Progressive Left was all for the fascist program in general. Depending on how you define “conservative” there were some anti-semites, but anti-semitism was hardly a feature of American conservatives more than American liberals.
Salient piint: pro-slavery attitude was principally a secular institution. It was not created or founded in or by churches, and as previously mentioned Southerners tended to have conventional and not-terribly-energetic religious views anyway. On the contrary, Abolitionism was predominantly a religious movement, frequently headquartered in the churches. The securlar Free-Soil movment, and then the nascent Republican Party, followed behind it.
Slavery, and Southern partisanship flowing from it, pulled all organizations in the South into its orbit. More or less every single public group was effectively pro-Slavery and pro-Southern-nationalism, including groups which had effectively disdained the slave economy and its agrarian consequences in earlier times. DeBow’s review, for example, went from a pro-industrial paper which was pro-slavery, but hoped to wean the Southern states away from it, to a pro-slavery, Southern Nationalist, pro agriculture paper. Even in Unionists areas within the South, it was increasingly dangerous to speak out against slavery, partly because powerful men would see to it you were punished harshly for it.
But more improtantly, who exactly was the “conservative” here? Southerners certainly weren’t pushing for political conservativism - that was mostly the Whig party, which existed in the South and was noticably less pro-slavery and Southern nationalist than the further-Left southern Democrats. That “conservative” cotton economy was less than a generation old, and in much of the South really less than that. It’s hard to see how pro-savery southerners were more conservative than new England Whigs. And probably the most conservative groups of all were midwestern Whigs and Democrats (and later Republicans), who were mostly against slavery, but not aggressively so, and mixed agragrian and urban economies. Meanwhile the most conservative groups within the South were mostly anti-slave uplanders, who frequently went outright Union even during the war. North Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginians from the Appalachians provided a surprising number of soldiers for the Federals armies, and these regions were all anti-Confederacy, or in the case of North Carolina lukewarm to the point of apathy.
Not really. The Democrats who were against civil rights were often also very much pro-labor. So were they conservatives or just racist liberals? The fact is someone like you, who starts with your predetermined anti-conservative bias will basically attach the label conservative to everything negative and then say “those were conservatives doing that stuff.”
I’ve already pointed out why you the term conservative and liberal thus becomes meaningless around here. I think the more process oriented terms at least are politically neutral, but if you just want to call everything evil in history “conservative” there is nothing that would stop you.
If you can give me a definition of conservative and liberal that aren’t “everything evil is conservative” and “everything good is liberal” then we might actually be able to use that definition to say if X thing from the past was conservative or liberal, but I doubt you’re willing to do that.
Just for my own amusement, if you define liberal as:
[ul]
[li]Supporting an increased welfare state[/li][li]Supporting greater government intervention and regulation of the economy[/li][li]Supporting secular values over religious values[/li][li]Supporting income redistribution[/li][li]Supporting limitations on free trade to protect local workers[/li][li]Opposing military imperialism / overseas adventurism[/li][/ul]
And you define conservative as:
[ul]
[li]Supporting a decrease or opposing an expansion in the welfare state[/li][li]Opposing greater government intervention and regulation of the economy[/li][li]Supporting traditional religious and family values[/li][li]Opposing income redistribution[/li][li]Opposing limitations on free trade[/li][li]Supporting military imperialism / overseas adventurism.[/li][/ul]
It’s difficult to fit either Democrats or Republicans in 1860 into those neat little boxes. For one the whole secular vs religious thing wasn’t as big back then, since virtually everyone was religious and those who were religious were serious about it. The economics is complicated. The Republicans were generally aligned with manufacturing interests so to a degree they supported tariffs and the Democrats were aligned with agricultural interests so they opposed tariffs. (High tariffs hurt their income from selling products overseas because of retaliatory tariffs, and high tariffs hurt the plantation owner’s ability to buy luxury goods from overseas.) However they also were in favor of strong pro-growth policies while the Democrats tended to favor policies that would perpetuate an agrarian lifestyle.
The Republicans favored a gold backed currency and the Democrats favored a silver backed currency (gold backed would probably map to more conservative if you tried to look at it using those poorly suited terms.) The Republicans were much more expansionist, wanting ever more settlement west, buying Alaska, eventually annexing Hawaii and continually looking to do stuff like take Cuba from Spain and etc. The Republicans were also fairly socially conservative, in that they supported the Prohibition movement and far right wing Protestant movements of the time.
Really, while people often try to hand wave and say “the Democrats of the 19th century were the conservatives and the Republicans were the liberals” it’s not really so simple.
