America is individualistic to the point of near-psychopathy, not socialist. Americans despise each other and the government, and hate the very thought of helping one another; they aren’t “collectivists”.
Until this thread I had no idea the fabian society was still around.Here’s their home page. They seem to be little more than a lefty think tank with little evidence over the British government, let alone the American government.
Again, I’m puzzled as to what the issue is. Our president is having a difficult enough time repealing tax cuts for the upper 2% while preserving those tax cuts for the middle class. I don’t think we have to worry about FEMA concentration camps, black helicopters, UN commanded Chinese troops, or whatever else keeps the OP up at night.
It appears the OP doesn’t much care about FEMA camps, just so long as everyone who’s in them is looking out for themselves.
Wage and price controls were part of the 1936 Four Year Plan, under Goring.
I think Americans dislike coercion. Voluntary cooperation, charity, and other measures of “helping one another” are represented well in America. But there is a (healthy, to my mind) anti-authoritarian streak that chafes at the idea of forced cooperation.
I, too, am curious as to what evidence wildorchid sees around him for a booming socialist movement. I, too, would dislike such a thing, but I don’t think I’ll see it any time soon.
That should be “influence,” not “evidence.” Not sure what I was thinking.
:rolleyes: Not much point reading beyond that point, is there? I mean, seriously, von Mises? Dude was a fucking pseudoscientist. Founded the Austrian School of economics. At least George Orwell never pretended to be an economist.
I admire your ideological purity. Would you like to discuss the relationship between Soviet-style Communism and Nazism, or does your dismissal of even reading a contrary opinion preclude that?
Their relationship? Their relationship was mutually hostile and could not have been otherwise. Both were forms of totalitarianism, including the suppression or takeover of all elements of civil society by the party/state. But, their ideologies and values and goals were very different, drawing on different intellectual heritages – the Nazis were romantics, the Communists rationalists. The Nazis were racists/nationalists, the Communists egalitarian internationalists at least in principle. The Pournelle Chart illustrates the difference, which the Libertarians’ [obfuscates. See also [url=http://newamerica.net/node/6042]“Which Civilisation?”](]Nolan Chart[/url) by Michael Lind, Prospect, 10/25/01:
Now, there was a left wing of the Nazi Party which was practically Commie except for its antisemitism – see Strasserism – but Hitler put it down once and for all in the Night of Long Knives shortly after he came to power.
Nonsense, they most certainly weren’t. That they may have shared some characteristics does not make them the same ideology, or anything close to it. The ideologies specifically called for the destruction of the other. Communist ideology certainly didn’t call for the extermination of inferior races to create living space for the German race. Notably, the number 2 inferior race slated for elimination for living in lebensraum that was rightfully meant for the expansion of the German peoples were the Slavs. Have a look at Generalplan Ost, note that everything west of the Urals was to be colonised by German people. Nazi ideology certainly didn’t call for the elimination of the bourgeoisie as class enemies of the proletariat. Communist ideology called for the elimination of nations, not the racial superiority of one over others. Dogs have fur, and cats have fur, but they are not rival factions of one animal.
I agree with the preceding. Both are versions of totalitarian statism. Both contrast starkly with Western liberalism. Before I proceed, bear in mind that both wildorchid and myself are referring to Soviet Communism, not some Marxist ideal version: Communism as actually practiced by the Soviet Union, and the Stalin era in particular, which was contemporaneous with the Nazi regime (wildorchid also referenced Mao, but I have not).
Yes, they had different intellectual heritages, though they arrived at similar conclusions.
The Pournelle idea of Communists as rational, and Nazis as romantic, seems unsupported. Nazis used science and intellectualism to support their agenda. Darwinism and natural law was an influence, as was scientific racism. Both Nazism and Communism were rationalist, in that both were attempting a “scientific” reordering of society to create a new, more perfect order. Both identified and murdered the perceived enemies of this new order.
Now, what the new order was, exactly, differed. But the commonalities are more persuasive than the differences, which makes the similar outcomes produced by both regimes (human misery, oppression, and mass murder) seem obvious in retrospect.
They are different breeds of totalitarianism. Yes, they had different enemies. The Nazis included a racist component; the Communists had a class component. Does persecution of Jews by the one, and kulaks by the other, make them so irreconcilable?
The Crips gang shoots Bloods, and the Bloods shoot Crips. Does this mean they cannot have the same ideology?
You’re confusing style of government with ideology. Fascism, Nazism and communism are all totalitarian styles of governance, but they do not share anything like the same ideology; as I have noted Nazi ideology and communist ideology could hardly be further apart and in fact called for the elimination of the other - their ‘different enemies’ were each other. Calling them “rival factions of the same poisonous ideology” is like calling ancient Hellenistic religion and Hinduism rival factions of the same religion because they were both polytheistic belief systems. Marxist-Leninism, Trotskyism and Stalinism are rival factions of the same ideology. Far from being also rival factions with Nazi ideology, they could hardly be further apart from it.
And yes, the persecution of Jews and kulaks are not comparable for ideological purposes. Under Nazi ideology the Jews (and the Slavs, and the Roma, etc) were to be exterminated for being racially inferior and enemies of the Germanic people and nation. The kulaks were ostensibly to be eliminated or reeducated for being class enemies. The children of the bourgeoisie could be reeducated to be good proletariats. The children of Jews or Slavs only use to the Nazis were to be exterminated or reduced to illiterate slavery to serve the master race. The theoretical goal of communism is a classless, nation less world. The goal of Nazism was the dominance of Europe by the German race and nation with inferior races to be exterminated or slaves to the master race.
Crips and Bloods are rival street gangs, not ideologies, so no they can’t share the same ideology as neither has one.
Totalitarianism is the ideology. The state is omnipotent over the individual, who is permitted to exist solely to serve the state.
“Could hardly be further apart”?
- One-party state
- Cult of personality
- Central planning of the economy
- Purging of enemies of the state, defined as broad classes of people, rather than individuals
- State control of all aspects of public life
- Press and religion controlled by the state
- Sought autarky
- Secret police
- Massive propaganda efforts
- State exists to serve one chosen group
They are absolutely comparable. The Nazis’ enemies of the state were mostly races, and thus could not be reeducated, that is the only real difference. And it’s not much of one, as execution was widely used by the Soviets as well. Both carried out murders over ideology as well as race / class.
“Class enemies” = “enemies of the Germanic people”.
Both sought the spread of their ideology, and “dominance by the German race” is equivalent to “dominance by the proletariat”.
On the contrary, they have ideology. Revenge must be sought for insults or killings, absolute loyalty is mandated, membership is permanent, territory should be held at all costs, perceived strength IS strength, and so forth. The trappings differ, but the core is the same. Just like Nazism and Soviet Communism.
No, it is the system; different thing.
I disagree. The system cannot be divorced from the ideology, it is inherent to it. Imagine the ideologies in question (Nazism, Soviet Communism, Western liberal democracy) broken down hierarchically. The top rank for Nazism and Soviet Communism would be totalitarian etatism: both start with the premise that the state is supreme to the individual, and the the state should control both public and private life.
Western liberal democracy’s top rank would be liberalism: it starts with the premise that the state exists to safeguard the individual and his liberty.
Nazism and Soviet Communism could never be liberal, liberal democracy can never be totalitarian.
Make sense? I’m happy to elaborate or clarify.
You guys are making a false dichotomy. Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union were totalitarian systems that had differences and things in common. They were both totalitarian systems with little to no individual freedom. (Is there any totalitarian system where there is individual freedom, and where the state isn’t supreme? These seem inherent in the definition of totalitarian.) However the Nazis were explicitly based on racial supremeacy and extreme nationalism, While the soviets were based on Marxist theory, non-racial on paper at least, and internationalist.
The picture is muddied in that Hitler was a true believer in his ideology, while Stalin was a cynical strongman who took up Marxist ideology because he gambled and won that it was the best way to power in Russia.
Cite? I know Stalin was an active Bolshevik years before the Revolution, back when success would have seemed a deeply unlikely prospect to anyone who was not a true believer.
I’ll admit I’m not an expert on this but I remember reading that he would rarely offer any original thought in meetings, but would agree with whatever the main party line was, while carefully finding allies and amassing a power base. He wasn’t the prolific writer Lenin was. But I’m not married to the idea, and I’m not going to hunt down a lot of sources for it.
This alone disqualifies you from discussing ideology. The Crips and Bloods do not have ideologies, and what trappings they have of ideologies aren’t remotely similar to those of the Nazis or communism. Calling them the same at the core is beyond absurd.
No, it isn’t. Nazism and communism have very distinct and seperate goals. The only real useful similarities is that they were both horrific totalitarian systems with little regard for human life. Attempting to call them different factions growing from the same ideological tree are absurd. Once again, their ideologies were so far apart that they called for the destruction of each other.
Its quite a massive differance, actually. For all of the evils and murders perpetrated by communist regiemes over the years, they didn’t set up death factories to idustrially expidite the mass murder of racial(or class in thier case) enemies, nor did they send einsatzgruppen behind thier advancing soldiers to execute every Jew (or I guess bourgeois in thier case) they could get thier hands on.
Poppycock.
On what planet is “dominance by the German race” the same as “dominance by the proletariat”? Nazis did not seek to spread thier ideology, they sought to conquer. The superiority of the Germanic race is hardly an exportable ideology, can you seriously see the pathet lao or the shining path being groups inspired by Nazism and seeking to set up governments in Laos and Peru based upon the racial superiority of being German? Castro taking power in Cuba and declaring it a great victory for the German race? Che Guevara travelling to Bolivia to export Nazism and the superiority of the Volksdeutsche and the need to seek lebensraum in the east?
This is a poor debate tactic.
Yes, they do. No, they aren’t similar to Nazism or Communism, they are similar to one another, despite often being at war. That is the analogy: dissimilar trappings, similar core.
Marginally so; the goal of both was a radical reordering of society into an omnipotent state, to favor a chosen group, which was held to be inherently worthy of this lofty position, and the eradication of the enemies within and without the new society that were inherently (ie, by their nature) opposed to it.
They were, and this was inherent to the totalitarian ideology they shared. The execution wasn’t flawed, the beliefs were, and flawed in a similar way.
They didn’t come from the same ideological tree, as I noted in post #30. They independently, from different intellectual sources, arrived at very similar ideas. Informal factions, if you will.
I’m not sure why this rules out their being similar…the Sino-Soviet split? The Cambodian–Vietnamese War? Iran-Iraq War? American Civil War? Similar ideologies war frequently, factions of ideologies war frequently.
And they weren’t so fundamentally opposed as to preclude an alliance, were they?
This isn’t a “who was more evil?” contest.
To those unfortunates outside the German race or the proletariat, I’m sure the difference was academic. Again: not identical, but of a kind.
Not so, look into the plans for post-invasion Britain. Spreading the ideology was exactly what they were going to do. If your arguement is that not everyone they conquered was to be integrated into the new society, and thus Nazism was fundamentally unlike Soviet Communism…I’d advise you to look deeper into the fate of Soviet class enemies. Outright murder or enslavement (at gulags) of those deemed undesireable to the new society were practiced by the Soviets as well.