If this has been covered before please accept my apologies in advance, point me to the link, and close this thread. But I’ve wondered about this for years and have never come up with a satisfying answer so I implore the brightest minds on the net to help me in my query.
So, were the Nazi’s really socialists?
Hi John. The question has been asked before and the answer was/is “no”.
And everton, you are incorrect. While not socialist in the Marxist or traditional European socialist sense, they were, in fact, socialists. They did not, as the link points out, delve heavily into economic theory.
Nevertheless, they made sure there were substantial aid to the working clkass, in the form of new public jobs, much newer and better housing, and so forth. Their idea was in some ways rather theoretically similar to communism as well, in that the state organized and directed the people as one to serve the needs of the people. (Obviously, neither worked out very well).
Well, if delivering “substantial aid to the working class” = “socialism”, then Bismarck was a socialist.
This gives socialism a meaning so wide as to be useless.
The Strassers might have been socialist, but after the Strasser wing was purged, I don’t think you could call them that.
[Walter]Nihilists! Say what you will about the National Socialists, at least it was an ethos![/Walter]
The NSDAP (National Socialist German Worker’s Party) was Fascist from top to bottom, but they (initially) had to compete with a lot of other groups, many of them true Socialists. They chose their name as a matter of political expedience: People were voting Socialist to alleviate the economic crisis, and Hitler wanted to jump on that bandwagon.
The name is a contradiction in terms. `National Socialism’ is a null concept, because it would mean mating nationalism with the tenets of International Socialism. Impossible, and proof that the Nazis could not have lived up to their name.
So, what is the Fascist economic policy? Anti-Marxist rhetoric coupled with a desire to preserve existing corporations as long as they serve the government. Private profit is allowed and poverty is seen as a failing of the individual, not the state or society. Those ideas right there throw out Socialism entirely.
Hitler instituted public works projects, true, but only as a means to make him popular with the working class and to prepare his nation for war. Ideally, a Fascist state is always on a war footing, because war burns up people, materiel, and energy while allowing the government to exercise limitless control over all aspects of society. The reference here is 1984 by George Orwell.
I suggest you define “socialist” or you’ll never get a correct answer to this question.