# Political Compass: Did Hitler want a feudal economy? Does that work on the Compass?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/political-compass-did-hitler-want-a-feudal-economy-does-that-work-on-the-compass/318196
**Category:** Great Debates
**Created:** [August 23, 2005, 12:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/political-compass-did-hitler-want-a-feudal-economy-does-that-work-on-the-compass/318196 "2005-08-23T00:04:52Z")
**Posts on this page:** 14
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)
#### Post date: [August 23, 2005, 12:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/political-compass-did-hitler-want-a-feudal-economy-does-that-work-on-the-compass/318196/1 "2005-08-23T00:04:52Z")
I had my family take the test at the [Political Compass](http://www.politicalcompass.org), but my mother objected to his placement on the right side.
Some snips from our argument:
> [@Mama Rat](#):
>
> One mistake they made was in putting Hitler on the ‘right’ side of the
> spectrum. Anybody who studies politics and history knows that Hitler was a
> socialist. Nazi stood for National Socialist Party. Socialists are on the
> left, not on the right. Hitler should have been put over there next to
> Stalin’s name on the left.
To which I replied:
They ranked the figures not by putting them down where they thought they should go, but by giving the answers that, historically, those persons would have given to the questions on the test. So assuming they did a good job researching Hitler–he ended up where he ended up.
And the one party in Japan is called The Liberal Democratic Party–and is much more conservative than the Republican in the US. “Socialist Party” doesn’t mean _socialist_ unless they actually enacted Marxist laws; and Hitler didn’t. He did buy his way out of depression (short-term\*) via massive government deficits\*\*, but he didn’t seek to change the overall layout of the economy in Germany. And the layout of Germany at that time was probably less socialist than the modern American one is.
- Short-term in the sense that the economy would have collapsed again if he hadn’t expanded the borders. [http://www.papillonsartpalace.com/nazi.htm](http://www.papillonsartpalace.com/nazi.htm)
\*\* Which is largely what GWB did–except in his case it looks like it’s going to hold.
> [@Mama Rat](#):
>
> Concerning Hitler, he was a real-life socialist. He believed in those same
> ideals that Stalin believed in. Both of them wanted strong, centralized
> governments with the governments themselves wholly controlling their
> economies and deciding who gets what and who goes where and who does what.
> One of the hallmarks of communism and socialism is a huge centralized
> government and the idea of ‘from each according to his means to each
> according to his needs.’ Obviously, communism would be much stronger with
> this type of thinking than socialism which still allows some forms of free
> markets and private ownership of property and businesses. I do believe that
> you’re right in that Hitler was not a communist per se, therefore he still
> had some forms of private property ownership and private business interests
> still functioning, whereas Stalin in the Soviet Union entirely took away any
> sort of privatization of anything. Hitler, though, as a socialist, should
> have been put more on the left toward Stalin, but not quite as much. It’s
> quite common for liberals to put Hitler on the right – since he’s the
> ultimate ‘baddy,’ but, technically, it’s not correct.
You’re missing the point of the two-axis layout. You’re arguing for Hitler being high on the authoritarian scale, where the government controls everything. And indeed, there he does rank high. Stalin wanted a wholly government-controlled socialist economy, Hitler wanted a wholly government-controlled capitalist economy. That is, the economy was allowed to continue as it was, so long as it went down the path he liked and that kept his approval rating high.
> [@Mama Rat](#):
>
> There’s a problem with that analogy: There’s no such thing as a government
> controlled capitalist economy. A capitalist economy is where the government
> stays out of the way and lets it happen, i.e., lets the people do their
> business without much interference. Hitler was not into keeping to himself
> in that respect. Hong Kong, in the past, was always considered the ultimate
> capitalist society. Britain just stood aside and let the people ‘do their
> thing’ with business. Hitler was not like that; he controlled everything in
> Germany with an iron fist. It would be impossible to run a capitalist
> economy in that way. Also, he nationalized most major businesses. Again,
> that is not representative of a capitalist system. And, a capitalist system
> can only work if the people have freedom to do their business without being
> told by the government how to do it. Hitler was not shy in telling
> businesses how to do their businesses – especially since he ‘owned’ them by
> nationalizing most businesses.
If the CEO of every single company was the same person, and he allowed his companies to compete against each other but would change his budget across the companies based on what he did and didn’t approve of, this is exactly what you would have.
Really what it is, is neither capitalist nor socialist but rather feudalist, as the three are differentiated at: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalist](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalist). But on the graph, Hitler’s feudalist economy ends up where it does and there’s not much that can be done about that–you would need a third dimension to add in a further economic goal.
* * *
Opinions? Thoughts?
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### Author:  [@SentientMeat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SentientMeat)
#### Post date: [August 23, 2005, 8:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/political-compass-did-hitler-want-a-feudal-economy-does-that-work-on-the-compass/318196/2 "2005-08-23T08:20:13Z")
Note that Hitler is only _barely_ to the right of the arbitrary zero, well to the left of today’s politicians - notice that Labour has traditionally been the UK’s “socialist” party and it is well over to the right also, and both Labour and Hitler are quite a way to the right of Lenin and Stalin’s Soviet Socialist Republics. Indeed, the Compass itself says in its analysis:
> [@Compass Analysis](#):
>
> Similarly Hitler, on an economic scale, was not an extreme right-winger. His economic policies were broadly Keynesian, and to the left of some of today’s Labour parties. If you could get Hitler and Stalin to sit down together and avoid economics, the two diehard authoritarians would find plenty of common ground.
“Socialist” is one of those flexible words like “liberal” - far more flexible than the specific “Marxist” or “communist”, I’d suggest.
Hitler did assume outright control of certain businesses (_eg._ those owned by Jews), but left others well enough alone compared to Lenin’s outright commandeering of **all** privately owned enterprises and factories. This was also a period of War Economics, with democracies like the UK and US assuming temporary control of key industries just as Hitler did. I think the Compass correctly places him near the _arbitrary_ zero - a very slight tweak would indeed have him on the economic Left.
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### Author:  [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)
#### Post date: [August 23, 2005, 8:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/political-compass-did-hitler-want-a-feudal-economy-does-that-work-on-the-compass/318196/3 "2005-08-23T08:34:37Z")
> [@SentientMeat](#):
>
> Note that Hitler is only _barely_ to the right of the arbitrary zero, well to the left of today’s politicians
But, to play devil’s advocate, this would put Hitler as further right than the majority of the people on this board–and I would find the people on this board as more inclined to the free marketplace than Hitler.
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### Author:  [@SentientMeat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SentientMeat)
#### Post date: [August 23, 2005, 8:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/political-compass-did-hitler-want-a-feudal-economy-does-that-work-on-the-compass/318196/4 "2005-08-23T08:44:30Z")
> [@SR](#):
>
> I would find the people on this board as more inclined to the free marketplace than Hitler.
There is actually a very broad spread economically - I recall that the average economic score was only marginally Left (-1 or something). As you said in your OP, comparing our overall attitudes to Hitler’s economic position regarding the extent of state intervention in the economy may not be comparing like with like. Hitler may have advocated completely different kinds of economic intervention (_eg._ letting the weak of certain ethnicities literally starve compared with our interventionist welfare approach, but heavily intervening in media businesses which we keep “free”), but the overall _level_ of that intervention was still probably **less** than what, say, I would advocate.
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### Author:  [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)
#### Post date: [August 23, 2005, 9:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/political-compass-did-hitler-want-a-feudal-economy-does-that-work-on-the-compass/318196/5 "2005-08-23T09:24:43Z")
Just to verify that I understand that statement correctly, you are saying that Dopers would want more government control in the economy than Hitler (though in drastically different areas)?
So then, on the Political Compass, the horizontal axis isn’t Socialism vs. Capitalism but rather a true counterpart to the vertical and simply an issue of how much the government should control the economy? If that is so would a person, who advocated a communist system where the government did not oversee that everyone pass around money equally and everyone just did it on their own, be a righty?
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### Author:  [@SentientMeat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SentientMeat)
#### Post date: [August 23, 2005, 9:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/political-compass-did-hitler-want-a-feudal-economy-does-that-work-on-the-compass/318196/6 "2005-08-23T09:41:04Z")
> [@](#):
>
> Just to verify that I understand that statement correctly, you are saying that Dopers would want more government control in the economy than Hitler (though in drastically different areas)?
_Some_ Dopers (such as myself), yes.
> [@](#):
>
> So then, on the Political Compass, the horizontal axis isn’t Socialism vs. Capitalism but rather a true counterpart to the vertical and simply an issue of how much the government should control the economy?
Yes. Someone near the arbitrary zero could, I think, reasonably call themselves “socialist” _or_ “capitalist”. Even at -5.12, I call myself a capitalist up to a point, in that I think it should be the _default_ and that public funding ought only be used to bring about a good that the private sector realistically cannot.
> [@](#):
>
> If that is so would a person, who advocated a communist system where the government did not oversee that everyone pass around money equally and everyone just did it on their own, be a righty?
Yes, but the word “communist” usually _does_ refer to such strong state control (or, at least, a questioning of the notion of “property” as such, which the Right asserts strongly). Such a “hands-off” government could itself be either left _or_ right depending on what the status of property rights were (weak=left, strong=right): that is essentially what distinguishes [US-type](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_capitalism) Libertarians from [European-type](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_socialism) Libertarians.
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### Author:  [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)
#### Post date: [August 23, 2005, 10:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/political-compass-did-hitler-want-a-feudal-economy-does-that-work-on-the-compass/318196/7 "2005-08-23T10:54:37Z")
Cool. I guess then that I had simply misunderstood the horizontal axis.
This does strike me as somewhat removing the compass from the real world in that it doesn’t address any particular issues except “freedom”–but that’s not necessarily bad I imagine.
However, ssuming that a 9 on the economic scale is 0% government interference, and -9 as 100%, I might be inclined to believe that 0 is something more like 25% than 50% and there is a curve along that axis.
And with me matching up with Hitler, I would have to research the actual extent of governmental control to see whether I would agree with “that much” if not “that way”–so I guess verifying that will have to remain up to someone else.
> [@SentientMeat](#):
>
> “communist” usually _does_ refer to such strong state control
Tangental, to the topic:
In modern years, it does seem that Communism and Socialism have both come to mean the same thing, but I’m relatively sure that Socialism is traditionally intended to refer to the intermediary step where government overseers monetary equality and Communism the final step where it is all done by free will without the necessity\* of government. Communism would thus be far right while as Socialism would be far left.
- Of course it may still exist to facilitate the process
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### Author:  [@SentientMeat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SentientMeat)
#### Post date: [August 23, 2005, 11:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/political-compass-did-hitler-want-a-feudal-economy-does-that-work-on-the-compass/318196/8 "2005-08-23T11:18:59Z")
> [@SR](#):
>
> This does strike me as somewhat removing the compass from the real world in that it doesn’t address any particular issues except “freedom”–but that’s not necessarily bad I imagine.
Well, I’d disagree actually - the real world issues are those 30 or so propositions relating to tax, public/private funding and what should be bought and sold _etc._, and those responses determine your place on the horizontal axis. If anything, this removes unhelpful and inaccurate labels which are interptreted differetly by different people.
> [@](#):
>
> In modern years, it does seem that Communism and Socialism have both come to mean the same thing
Only in the US, post-McCarthy. The rest of the industrialised democratic world seemingly understands them as distinct.
> [@](#):
>
> Socialism is traditionally intended to refer to the intermediary step where government overseers monetary equality
I’d say _distribution_ rather than “equality”. Only extreme socialism (Marxism or, traditionally, “communism”) seeks to distribute absolutely everything absolutely equally.
> [@](#):
>
> and Communism the final step where it is all done by free will without the necessity\* of government. Communism would thus be far right while as Socialism would be far left.
Hmm, I don’t think that absolute free will is _communism_, really. It is more _anarchism_. [Anarcho-_capitalism_](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism) grants “property” (even if it is only, _ad hoc_, what you can forcefully prevent other people _taking_), which is far Right. You seem to be talking about [anarcho-_communism_](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-communism), where everything is “owned” _communally_ (“What is owned by everyone is owned by no one”), and thus cannot be traded in the first place. This latter is still _Left_ since property rights are so weak.
Just think of the entire horizontal axis being moved _up and down the vertical axis_. At the top, you would have the strong state control of both Stalin (Left - no property) and Pinochet (Right - strong property). At the bottom, you would have no state control, only individuals, but still distinct differences where those individuals claimed monopolistic use of resources (“property”) versus those in which the individuals claimed no such monopoly, as in a _commune_. “Communism” would still occupy the Left of the horizontal axis regardless of where it lay on the vertical, I’d suggest.
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### Author:  [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)
#### Post date: [August 23, 2005, 11:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/political-compass-did-hitler-want-a-feudal-economy-does-that-work-on-the-compass/318196/9 "2005-08-23T11:57:06Z")
> [@SentientMeat](#):
>
> If anything, this removes unhelpful and inaccurate labels which are interpretted differently by different people.
That is what I meant.
We do have to assume that the makers of the test knew where to place us based on our response to the labels of current issues. For instance the issue of “The rich are taxed too much”, is this referring to the US where it is ~40% or the one place where it was ~70%? We have to assume that the test givers had a number in mind or else their grading will be off.
If the result is going to be free of labels, probably the test itself would have been better if instead of having single-phrase questions on current topics, instead it had full paragraph ones giving very explicit details of fictional societies and events. Of course then no one would ever take the test. But even in its current form, I would probably place it within 15% accuracy.
But anyways, now I’m just pontificating. Thank you for the answers. 🙂
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### Author:  [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)
#### Post date: [August 23, 2005, 1:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/political-compass-did-hitler-want-a-feudal-economy-does-that-work-on-the-compass/318196/10 "2005-08-23T13:56:25Z")
Absolutes conceived as opposites on a linear continuum often tend to resemble each other (especially when viewed obliquely); that which looks or was intended to be linear is often a very curved space indeed.
IANAE (where E = Economist) but It is my understanding that the economic theory of the National Socialists was that government was to be an outgrowth of and agent of business. Picture the US or the UK where the nation’s biggest corporations select some CEO types and put them in charge of the country, and give them _carte blanche_ to get things done. Rescind all rights of states and individuals, the government is the absolute boss, but not so much over the big corporations as on their behalf, as their guy. Such government will not have limits on its authority and can regulate all behavior on behalf of maintaining the general safety and establishing social cohesion.
You can see how (in theory) that differs from an agenda of the People of the US or the UK rising up and establishing a government which would be not at all the corporations’ agent but which would instead, on behalf of the People, rescind the rights of corporations and other entities owning private property to dispense with it at will, and distribute resources, protect people by regulating permissible behavior for the common good and to protect the ongoing success of the Revolution, and plan all business activity from a new central authority that would be the antithesis of the old corporate entities and would do its planning on behalf of everybody, rather than for the making of a profit.
Of course you can also see that give or take some rhetorical diffs and some overturning of actual personnel from the “who’s in charge” seats, the end result isn’t much different. Both economic systems are inseparable from the authoritarianism they depend on and mostly consist of. Both systems amount to “an entity will be in total control of both economic planning and regulation of all behavior public and private”
Even if we replace the linear continuum (or continuua? in the case of the x,y compass?) with what seems to me to be the true axis — coercion-based vs. voluntary cooperation —you get some weird dissolve at the extremes, where an anarchy so devoid of even the weight of the traditional authority of prior consensus isn’t distinguishable from an absolute/perpetual competitive totalitarianism in which no one ever obeys anyone else except when specifically and immediately coerced into doing so: in both cases you get a nonsystem of aggressive individuals taking what they can by force and no one working in tandem with anyone else whatsoever!
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### Author:  [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)
#### Post date: [August 23, 2005, 2:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/political-compass-did-hitler-want-a-feudal-economy-does-that-work-on-the-compass/318196/11 "2005-08-23T14:11:20Z")
I can read that. 😃
On the old left-right only scale I would be much more inclined to agree that the extremes meet, but on the compass which is essentially anarchy vs. totalinarianism as the extremes on both poles I really don’t see those coming together–except maybe in undesirableness.
Is National Socialism what Hitler strove for? Or are you refering to something else? I haven’t encountered the term before, so I’m not sure why you are including it.
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### Author:  [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)
#### Post date: [August 23, 2005, 2:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/political-compass-did-hitler-want-a-feudal-economy-does-that-work-on-the-compass/318196/12 "2005-08-23T14:13:11Z")
> [@](#):
>
> Stalin wanted a wholly government-controlled socialist economy, Hitler wanted a wholly government-controlled capitalist economy.
I wouldn’t argue that Hitler was capitalist, per se. He may have had an od form of socialism, one not favored by Communists or traditional socialists of any stripe, but he did have nearly unlimited powers over the German marketplace, had he chosen to excercise them. He simply decided that coopting industry was better than crushing it.
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### Author:  [@MMI](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MMI)
#### Post date: [August 23, 2005, 2:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/political-compass-did-hitler-want-a-feudal-economy-does-that-work-on-the-compass/318196/13 "2005-08-23T14:37:51Z")
There _was_ a socialist wing of the Nazi party. IIRC it was strongest in Berlin. Once the Nazi’s were in control it was purged, even before the Night of the Long Knives.
The Nazi party did have views of the government being all encompassing (perhaps totalitarian?), and at many levels, operations would be run through the party rather than through the government proper. For example, relief efforts after bombings would be run by the local Nazi party rather than through a government office, though the resources of course had the same source. Good propoganda for the party, good machine politics.
However, the party was not friendly to labor, while being fairly business friendly (assuming those businesses were Nazi-friendly, of course). Good casual nazi capitalists could make a lot of money off of slave labor.
It should be noted, that the German baseline social welfare state was of long standing by that point, having been introduced by Bismark to undercut the socialists of his day. As is usually the case, mapping politics of other eras and locations to modern political spectrums is difficult at best.
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### Author:  [@SentientMeat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SentientMeat)
#### Post date: [August 25, 2005, 2:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/political-compass-did-hitler-want-a-feudal-economy-does-that-work-on-the-compass/318196/14 "2005-08-25T14:29:09Z")
The Compass has now updated its FAQ specifically to [address this very point](http://www.digitalronin.f2s.com/politicalcompass/faq.php#hitler).