Author Topic: National Socialists were socialists  (Read 4192 times)

Zea_mays

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Re: National Socialists were socialists
« Reply #15 on: January 24, 2022, 11:59:56 pm »
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Yes. To make things clear, though, we need a term to explicitly describe this way of thinking. I suggest competitionism.

I don't object to this, but it seems like such a concept may already have a name? (Although from what I've written below, perhaps competitionism is the most concise way to describe this.)


For example, in biology, whichever individual has a higher competitive advantage has higher fitness, and higher fitness means their traits are under natural selection. Not all traits under natural selection are HERITABLE (so, for example, a business owner outcompeting someone else is "economic natural selection", but a bureaucratic business strategy itself isn't biologically heritable).

When it comes to science, compare this chart of how "machine learning" algorithms are "trained"/pruned to Darwin's tree of evolution. The most efficient/successful/advanced routes are selected for:

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Will-Serrano/publication/313408173/figure/fig8/AS:669010169438243@1536515862984/Artificial-Neural-Network-Deep-Learning-model.png

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/images/Cdfig3.gif


Capitalism is similar to primal natural selection in that, at the root of things, everyone is fighting for themselves (or, if they are successful enough, for their families/clans/ethnic group).

I.e., this is decentralized capitalism:
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Competition lowers the fitness of both organisms involved, since the presence of one of the organisms always reduces the amount of the resource available to the other.[2]
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There are three major mechanisms of competition: interference, exploitation, and apparent competition (in order from most direct to least direct). Interference and exploitation competition can be classed as "real" forms of competition, while apparent competition is not, as organisms do not share a resource, but instead share a predator.[4] Competition among members of the same species is known as intraspecific competition, while competition between individuals of different species is known as interspecific competition.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competition_(biology)

On the other hand, it seems "collectivist" style False Left progressivism aims to maximize fitness among the entire population.

False Left progressivists want to reduce/eliminate human intra-specific competition to maximize average human fitness. Not just reproductively (e.g. transhumanism), but also in terms of knowledge-generation-algorithms (i.e. in the post you linked, they want to get rid of capitalism for more efficient methods of 'technological advancement').


I think "Social Darwinism" is basically "competitionism". Many conservatives would want nature to simply run its course, but "progressive" False Leftists 100+ years ago were heavily involved in the eugenics movement, basically using state power to more efficiently promote competitively-successful Western traits!
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Social Darwinism refers to various theories and societal practices that applied biological concepts of natural selection and survival of the fittest to sociology, economics and politics, and which were largely defined by scholars in Western Europe and North America in the 1870s.[1][2]
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In 1883 Sumner published a highly-influential pamphlet entitled "What Social Classes Owe to Each Other", in which he insisted that the social classes owe each other nothing, synthesizing Darwin's findings with free-enterprise capitalism for his justification.[citation needed] According to Sumner, those who feel an obligation to provide assistance to those unequipped or under-equipped to compete for resources, will lead to a country in which the weak and inferior are encouraged to breed more like themselves, eventually dragging the country down. Sumner also believed that the best equipped to win the struggle for existence was the American businessman, and concluded that taxes and regulations serve as dangers to his survival.
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On the basis of U.S. theory and practice, commercial Darwinism operates in markets worldwide, pitting corporation against corporation in struggles for survival.[65]
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In contrast, Fabians in the early 1900s sought to use the state as the means through which a collectivist social Darwinism was to be put into effect. The common Fabian views of the time reconciled a specific form of state socialism and the goal of reducing poverty with eugenics policies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Darwinism

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Universal Darwinism aims to formulate a generalized version of the mechanisms of variation, selection and heredity proposed by Charles Darwin, so that they can apply to explain evolution in a wide variety of other domains, including psychology, linguistics, economics, culture, medicine, computer science and physics.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Darwinism


In contrast, we want to use state power to REDUCE FITNESS to zero and end this madness once and for all. (Which is also the only way to end both intra-specific and inter-specific species competition.)


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Is this a problem or not?

In the long term, yes, but I suppose in the short term a centrally-directed economy will ensure that a 'competitive' business owner is serving the needs of the state/nation, rather than enriching themselves, and therefore it won't be a massive problem. This is basically what Hitler complains to Strasser about. If you are too rapid at disrupting the economy (like the Soviets), then your nation becomes weak and cannot even persist long enough to defend itself and implement the true long-term goals of Socialism.

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The state intervening to help A over B in the example above can be considered action towards realizing Jesus' presciption that the meek inherit the earth.

Indeed, the meek inheriting the literal earth makes no sense without statist Socialism!

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I question whether the "Enlightenment" stuff should be included at all. Elsewhere we have agreed to classify Romanticism within leftism, and Romanticism was a movement against the "Enlightenment", so.....

I suppose so. I've seen "classical liberalism" (i.e. ~18th century democratic/constitutionalist ideas) grouped under conservatism before. (And communists call liberals "rightists", although communists call everyone rightists, including communist factions they don't like...)

I briefly skimmed this article, and if it can be believed, it seems "liberalism" only got serious about social issues in the 2nd half of the 19th century, once actual Socialism became influential against the "laissez-faire" social and economic approaches of "classical liberalism".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_liberalism