Author Topic: National Socialists were socialists  (Read 4189 times)

90sRetroFan

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Re: National Socialists were socialists
« Reply #15 on: January 18, 2022, 12:51:43 am »
Firstly, thank you very much for your excellent work, as always.

"The True Left must reframe the relationship to accurately contextualize Marxist Socialism as merely one type of Socialism among many(?) possibilities.
In other words, instead of Marxism being the umbrella term under which varieties of Socialism fall, Socialism is the umbrella term under which many different types of leftism fall."

A major problem is that Marxism only considers consequentially post-capitalist systems as candidates for socialism, because in Marx's worldview, socialism is what happens after people have tried and are fed up with capitalism. Thus pre-capitalist systems which in practice may be closer to versions of socialism that we favour are ignored altogether, or at best dismissed under a blanket label of "feudalism".

Recall the following excerpt from Aryanism.net:

Quote
Marx, while critical of capitalism itself, viewed the spread of capitalism to non-Western countries via Western colonialism as an indirectly beneficial development for his own ends, as only thus would non-Western societies be thrust into economic conditions that make communist revolution attractive, whereas communist revolution would have been a much harder sell to non-Western countries had they remained pre-capitalist. Incidentally, this makes it inconsistent for any serious anti-communist to believe in Western superiority.

http://aryanism.net/wp-content/uploads/no-usury.jpg

If we judge purely by practical characteristics instead of causality in relation to capitalism, it would make a lot of sense to classify the system described in the image link as a potentially socialist system. The only reason this is rarely done by self-proclaimed present-day socialists is because most (False Leftists) are progressives, and hence presume that whatever came before capitalism must have been even worse than capitalism, and thus do not deserve the name of socialism (which is supposed to denote something better than capitalism). Only True Leftists and hence regressives are willing to imagine that socialism was historically common until interrupted by capitalism.

Let's go back to the definition of socialism I proposed on Aryanism.net:

Quote
Socialism is the belief that state intervention is essential to realistically combatting social injustice, and that it is the moral duty of the state to so intervene. It is based on the view that the stateless system (e.g. free markets) is rigged against true merit in favour of non-merit-based competitive advantages, a problem which can therefore only be remedied by adding rules to the system, where the rules have been derived with the promotion of merit in mind, and function as to nullify the non-merit-based competitive advantages.

State intervention was taken for granted in pre-capitalist systems, and there are many examples of ancient rulers motivated by social justice in their decision-making. I therefore propose that we should describe such rulers as socialists, for example:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism#Early_socialism

Quote
The economy of the 3rd century BCE Mauryan Empire of India, an absolute monarchy, has been described by some scholars as "a socialized monarchy" and "a sort of state socialism" due to "nationalisation of industries".[85][86]

Basically, a socialist is anyone who wants to use the state to help superior losers defeat inferior winners. This goes beyond narrowly economic applications. For example, it would be a socialist belief* to consider that A will do a better job as a ruler, but B will be better at seizing power, and hence (in absence of state intervention) B will become the next ruler and then do a bad job. Thus an existing socialist ruler would not sit back and let A and B compete for power, but would hand power over to A directly, and perhaps kill B** in order to make things safe for A. Thus the belief that an existing ruler should choose their own successor (absolute monarchism) could be interpreted as an aspect of socialism (as indeed Fuehrerprinzip is an aspect of National Socialism).

(* In contrast, a non-socialist would believe that the one who is better at seizing power will necessarily be the one who will also do the better job as a ruler.)

(** A National Socialist would not only kill B but eliminate B's bloodline.)
« Last Edit: January 18, 2022, 02:30:36 am by 90sRetroFan »

Zea_mays

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Re: National Socialists were socialists
« Reply #16 on: January 20, 2022, 08:59:16 pm »
Quote
A major problem is that Marxism only considers consequentially post-capitalist systems as candidates for socialism, because in Marx's worldview, socialism is what happens after people have tried and are fed up with capitalism.

They technically acknowledged that pre-state hunter-gatherer societies theoretically resembled a communist society:
Quote
The original idea of primitive communism is rooted in ideas of the noble savage through the works of Rousseau[6] and the early anthropology of Morgan and Parker.[7][8][9] Engels offered the first detailed elaboration upon that of primitive communism in 1884, with the publication of The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State.[7][10] Engels categorised primitive communist societies into two phases, the "wild" (hunter-gatherer) phase that lacked permanent superstructure and had close relationships with the natural world, and the "barbarian" phase which was structure like the populations ancient Germany[8] beyond the borders of the Roman Empire and the Indigenous peoples of North America before the colonisation by Europeans.[11] Marx and Engels used the term more broadly than Marxists did later, and applied it not only to hunter-gatherers but also to some subsistence agriculture communities.[12] There is also no agreement among later scholars, including Marxists, on the historical extent, or longevity, of primitive communism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primitive_communism

But I think you are correct that they would not have considered these or later state societies as candidates for being able to live in "real" socialism, since they did not meet the economic conditions to "progress" to the higher stage of "real" socialism. In other words, "primitive communists" could not remain primitive forever, and thus their forms of government were not taken as serious candidates for a stable socialism.


Apparently "woke" Communists, however, have attempted to take these "primitives" more seriously. I.e., such scholars are moving away from orthodox Marxism to True Leftism:
Quote
Debate
[...]
Use of the term "primitive"

"Primitive" in recent anthropological and social studies has begun to fall out of use due to racial stereotypes surrounding the ideas of what "primitive" is.[34][113][114][51][50][115] Such a move has been supported by indigenous peoples who have faced racial stereotyping and violence due to being viewed as "primitive".[116][117] Due to this the term "primitive communism" may be replaced by terms such as Pre-Marxist communism.[118]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primitive_communism#Use_of_the_term_%22primitive%22
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Marxist_communism

It is only after they abandon the communist definition of what "socialism" means that these scholars will actually get anywhere.

----

I think your definition of socialism is great and concise, although this raises the question as to what "merit" means.
Quote
Socialism is the belief that state intervention is essential to realistically combatting social injustice, and that it is the moral duty of the state to so intervene. It is based on the view that the stateless system (e.g. free markets) is rigged against true merit in favour of non-merit-based competitive advantages, a problem which can therefore only be remedied by adding rules to the system, where the rules have been derived with the promotion of merit in mind, and function as to nullify the non-merit-based competitive advantages.

Obviously, a rightist would disagree with socialism entirely since they believe an individual possessing a natural competitive advantage _is_ merit/virtue in and of itself.

I think how one defines merit traces back to how they define the "social idea" behind their socialism. The implementation of political socialism is what is necessary to achieve the "social idea" of making society meritorious. I think in this sense, the early-20th-century vocabulary "social idea" is synonymous with today's vocabulary "social justice". (In the sense that today "social justice" is more than just a word--it means the core emotion of what moves the passion of sincere leftists; the abstract animating force behind the political movement).

Ok, so we use state power to achieve social justice. But what does that look like? I suppose for communists, that is (exclusively?) economic. The economic have-nots receive "justice" by taking a turn as the slave master over the land-owners and business-owners (which actually includes non-evil people and people who managed to build a successful business due to actual talent, as well as non-productive parasitic elites like financial speculators and talentless hacks who inherited great wealth). As Hitler recognized, that is not "real" socialism. That is not real social justice; that does not really improve the fabric of society.

I am sure there are other definitions from the main site which concisely summarize what we mean by social justice. Off the top of my head, could we say that to us, true social justice means complete freedom, which requires eliminating all forms of exploitation (to humans and non-humans), which necessarily entails the biological improvement of the bloodlines that comprise society in order to make this condition possible. State intervention in economics alone (i.e. communism) will not restore merit to society. State intervention in education/culture alone (i.e. PC liberalism) will not restore merit to society. Only state intervention in biological quality (i.e. National Socialism) will be able to restore merit to society.


----

Also, here is a Hitler speech showing how he agrees entirely with your definition of socialism. Competitive "might" is not identical with merit, and therefore the state must use its power to defend merit and welfare of society a a whole.

I will post another quote further down how Hitler says Jesus is one of the originators of real Socialism, thereby acknowledging Socialism is indeed a very ancient concept.


Speech in Munich. March 27, 1924
Quote
... Might is never identical with right.

Frederick the Great once said something which clearly defined the relationship of might and right. He said that the law is worth nothing if it is not defended by the sword. In other words, the law was always worthless unless protected by might.
[...]
Whatever remnants of authority we still possess today can be traced ultimately to the beginnings of the present Reich; it was Frederick William who established the authority of the state. It was the great king who said of himself: "I am the servant of the State!" This applies equally to them all, even the old heroic Kaiser himself.

Today we all still benefit from this authority of the state. The authority of the state was identical with the well-being of the People, it was not something which was prejudicial to the well-being of the People. Carlyle emphasizes that Frederick the Great devoted his entire life's work to the service of his People.

----


Here's a modified tree of leftism. Definitions are important, but I don't think our re-classification of Marxism/Communism as merely one form of Socialism will be intuitive to the public at large unless they are able to see things in a chart/graph. The things I list under True Leftism include the ideologies we wish to salvage or draw inspiration from, even if they aren't 100% in agreement with us on all issues. What do you think about this?


Tier 0. (Temperament)
   - Leftism

Tier 1. (Abstract/general attitudes)
   - Socialism (further expanded below)
   - Enlightenment-based forms of liberalism(?) (not listed below)
   - others?

Tier 2. (Ideological theories)
   - (a) True Leftism
   - (b) Marxism
   - (c) authentic Fascism(?)

   -- (d?) 'Social Democracy' (including Sanders-style "progressivism" in the US) would be placed separately with dashed lines extending from both Socialism and Enlightenment-based liberalism
   -- (e?) the historic Enlightenment-based "Utopian Socialism" could be placed similarly(?)

Tier 3. (Political movements addressing the problems defined by the ideological theories)
   - (a1) National Socialism
   - (a2) Platonic Republicanism
   - (a3) early pre-Marx socialist states/leaders who did not have an explicit ideology
   - (a4) individual manifestations of True Leftism or small personality-centered movements which did not attain power
   - (a5?) religious socialism

   - (b1) Communism
   - (b2) 'Anarcho-Communism'

   - (c1) Italian school of Fascism(?)
   - (c2) Juche(?)

   -- (d?) Socialism with Chinese Characteristics--and other "fellow traveller" forms of Socialism which have clearly begun to forge their own path distinct from Marxism--could be placed separately with dashed lines extending from both True Leftism and Marxism(?)

Tier 4. (Specific implementation of the political movement to govern based on the specific circumstances of a country and time period)
   - (a1) Hitlerism
   - (a2) ? not enacted by any actual regime
   - (a3) Mauryan-Empire-ism, Julius-Caesar-ism, and other examples
   - (a4) John Brown, Malcolm X, etc.

   - (b1) Leninism/Stalinism/Maoism/etc.

   - (c1) Mussolini-ism

   - (d) Dengism, Chavismo, etc.


----------

I have included authentic Fascism under Socialism, as they considered themselves to be derived from socialism.

For example:
Quote
Mussolini was so familiar with Marxist literature that in his own writings he would not only quote from well-known Marxist works but also from the relatively obscure works.[38] During this period Mussolini considered himself a Marxist and he described Marx as "the greatest of all theorists of socialism."[39]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benito_Mussolini#Political_journalist,_intellectual_and_socialist
(Note how Mussolini considered Marx as merely one theorist of Socialism. By definition, Communists consider Marx as the greatest Socialist theorist and ultimate originator of all Socialism. It would make no sense for Mussolini to qualify Marx as merely one of the greatest unless it was clear to him that Marx was merely one of many who outlined different interpretations of Socialism.)

Quote
After being ousted by the Italian Socialist Party for his support of Italian intervention, Mussolini made a radical transformation, ending his support for class conflict and joining in support of revolutionary nationalism transcending class lines.[9] He formed the interventionist newspaper Il Popolo d'Italia and the Fascio Rivoluzionario d'Azione Internazionalista ("Revolutionary Fasces for International Action") in October 1914.[46]
[...]
On 5 December 1914, Mussolini denounced orthodox socialism for failing to recognize that the war had made national identity and loyalty more significant than class distinction.[9]
[...]
Mussolini continued to promote the need of a revolutionary vanguard elite to lead society. He no longer advocated a proletarian vanguard, but instead a vanguard led by dynamic and revolutionary people of any social class.[55] Though he denounced orthodox socialism and class conflict, he maintained at the time that he was a nationalist socialist and a supporter of the legacy of nationalist socialists in Italy's history, such as Giuseppe Garibaldi, Giuseppe Mazzini, and Carlo Pisacane. As for the Italian Socialist Party and its support of orthodox socialism, he claimed that his failure as a member of the party to revitalize and transform it to recognize the contemporary reality revealed the hopelessness of orthodox socialism as outdated and a failure.[56] This perception of the failure of orthodox socialism in the light of the outbreak of World War I was not solely held by Mussolini; other pro-interventionist Italian socialists such as Filippo Corridoni and Sergio Panunzio had also denounced classical Marxism in favor of intervention.[57]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benito_Mussolini#Beginning_of_Fascism_and_service_in_World_War_I


For further information on leftist Fascism, I would recommend looking into the works of scholar A. James Gregor. Throughout his career, he wrote extensively on Fascism, Marxism, Socialism, and comparisons of them. Most importantly, he seems sympathetic to Fascism (particularly in his younger days), meaning he is not just a rightist attempting to insult leftism by calling Fascism leftist.
Quote
Gregor argued that scholars do not agree on the definition of fascism, stating in 1997 that "Almost every specialist has his own interpretation."[6] He argued that Marxist movements of the 20th century discarded Marx and Engels and instead adopted theoretical categories and political methods much like those of Mussolini.[7] In The Faces of Janus (2000) Gregor asserted that the original "Fascists were almost all Marxists—serious theorists who had long been identified with Italy's intelligentsia of the Left."[8] In Young Mussolini (1979), Gregor describes Fascism as "a variant of classical Marxism."[9] According to Gregor, many revolutionary movements have assumed features of paradigmatic Fascism, but none are its duplicate. He said that post-Maoist China displays many of its traits. He denied that paradigmatic Fascism can be responsibly identified as a form of right-wing extremism.[10]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._James_Gregor#Study_of_fascism

Quote
On November 24, 1914, when he was expelled from the Socialist Party, Mussolini insisted that his expulsion could not divest him of his ‘socialist faith.’ He made the subtitle of his new paper, Il Popolo d’Italia, ‘A Socialist Daily.’
[...]
By the time Spirito delivered his communications at the Convention of 1932, these sentiments had united with neo-idealist totalitarian aspirations. The result was variously identified as ‘Fascist communism,’ Fascist Bolshevism’ or ‘Fascist socialism.’
[...]
Mussolini was a well-informed and convinced Marxist. His ultimate political convictions represent a reform of classical Marxism in the direction of a restoration of its Hegelian elements.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/A._James_Gregor

Zea_mays

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Re: National Socialists were socialists
« Reply #17 on: January 20, 2022, 09:18:24 pm »
More from Hermann Rauschning's discussions with Hitler. These are the most stunning things I have read thus far. Even if Rauschning was exaggerating certain details of these conversations, clearly all this information is in line with the other quotes I have posted, suggesting it accurately portrays Hitler's real sentiments.

Moreover, we can clearly see Rauschning's distrust of Hitler did not arise because he thought National Socialism was incompetent at implementing rightist goals, but because Hitler was a revolutionary Socialist who never served rightism in the first place.

Quote
Executor of Marxism

“I am not only the conqueror, but also the executor of Marxism—of that part of it that is essential and justified, stripped of its Jewish-Talmudic dogma.”

I had asked Hitler whether the crux of the whole economic problem was not the extent to which private economic interests might continue to be the motive force of the national economy. There were party members who passionately denied the possibility of this, and expected a more radical social revolution than moderate Marxism, at any rate, had ever intended.

“I have learnt a great deal from Marxism, as I do not hesitate to admit,” Hitler went on. “I don’t mean their tiresome social doctrine or the materialist conception of history, or their absurd ‘marginal utility’ theories and so on. But I have learnt from their methods. The difference between them and myself is that I have really put into practice what these peddlers and pen-pushers have timidly begun. The whole of National Socialism is based on it. Look at the workers’ sports clubs, the industrial cells, the mass demonstrations, the propaganda leaflets written specially for the comprehension of the masses; all these new methods of political struggle are essentially Marxist in origin. All I had to do was to take over these methods and adapt them to our purpose. I had only to develop logically what Social Democracy repeatedly failed in because of its attempt to realise its evolution within the framework of democracy. National Socialism is what Marxism might have been if it could have broken its absurd and artificial ties with a democratic order.”

“But surely,” I objected, “what you are describing is not distinct from the Bolshevism and Communism of Russia.”

“Not at all!” Hitler cried. “You are making the usual mistake. What remains is a revolutionary creative will that needs no ideological crutches, but grows into a ruthless instrument of might invincible in both the nation and the world. A doctrine of redemption based on science thus becomes a genuine revolutionary movement possessing all the requisites of power.”
[...]
“In my youth, and even in the first years of my Munich period after the war, I never shunned the company of Marxists of any shade. I was of the opinion that one or other of them showed promise. Certainly they had every freedom to unfold their potentialities. But they were and remained small men. They wanted no giants who towered above the multitude, though they had plenty of pedants who split dogmatic hairs. So I made up my mind to start something new. But it would have been possible at that time to transform the German working-class movement into what we are today. Perhaps it would have been wholesomer for Germany if there had been no split over this matter. Really, there was not much to prevent the German workers from throwing off their mistaken conception of a democracy, within the framework of which their revolution could be fulfilled. But of course that was the decisive, world-historical step reserved for us.”

After reflecting for a moment. Hitler resumed:

“You ask whether private economic interests will have to be eliminated. Certainly not. ... The instinct to earn and the instinct to possess cannot be eliminated. Natural instincts remain. We should be the last to deny that. But the problem is how to adjust and satisfy these natural instincts. The proper limits to private profit and private enterprise must be drawn through the state and general public according to their vital needs. And on this point I can tell you, regardless of all the professors’ theories and trades-union wisdom, that there is no principle on which you can draw  any universally valid limits.
[...]
“There is no ideal condition of permanent validity. Only fools believe in a cut-and-dried method of changing the social and economic order. There is no such thing as equality, abolition of private property, just wage, or any of the other ideas they’ve been splitting hairs over. And all the distinctions that are made between production for consumption and production for profit are just pastimes for idlers and muddle-heads.”

“What about the programme of land reforms, the rescue from ground-rent serfdom and nationalisation of the banks?” I asked.

Hitler gesticulated impatiently. “Are you worrying about that programme, too?” he asked. “Need I explain its meaning to you? Anybody who takes it literally, instead of seeing it as the great landscape painted on the background of our stage, is a simpleton. I shall never alter this programme; it is meant for the masses. It points the direction of some of our endeavours—neither more nor less. It is like the dogma of the Church. Is the significance of the Church exhausted by the dogma? Does it not lie much more in the Church rites and activities? The masses need something for the imagination, they need fixed, permanent doctrines. The initiates know that there is nothing fixed, that everything is continutally changing. That is why I impress upon you that National Socialism is a potential Socialism that is never consummated because it is in a state of constant change.”
Hermann Rauschning. (1939). Hitler Speaks. Page 185-188.
https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.505385/page/n185/mode/2up

This sounds almost identical to the "collectivist" approach used by the Communist party in one-party Communist states:
Quote
Hitler had given me to understand that he regarded me as worthy of being admitted to his innermost thoughts—such as he had not disclosed even to his Gauleiter, who had shown himself incapable of understanding them. Did this not place me under obligations, compel me to keep this knowledge from the masses, and even to be tolerant of the uncomprehending desires of these masses, not to mention the Gauleiter themselves? Or, on the other hand, was this appearance of confidence a mere deception, one of Hitler’s many tricks by means of which he kept people subservient?

I asked Hitler the meaning of the triangle he had drawn for Ley, of the Labour Front, and a number of Gauleiter, in order to make the future social order clear to them.
[...]
“Oh, yes, I remember,” Hitler replied. “This is what you mean: one side of the triangle is the ‘Labor Front,’ the social community, the classless community in which each man helps his neighbour. Everyone feels secure here, each one gets assistance, advice and occupation for his leisure time. All are equal here.

The second side is the professional class. Here each individual is separate, graded, according to his ability and quality, to work for the general good. Knowledge is the criterion here. Each is worth as much as he accomplishes.

The third side represents the party, which, in one or other of its many branches, embraces every German who has not been found unworthy. Each one in the party shares the privilege of leading the nation. Here the decisive factors are devotion and resolution. All are equal as party comrades, but each man must submit to a grading of ranks that is inviolable.”

This, I agreed, was roughly what Forster had tried to explain to me, but he had been only partially successful. There had been some mystic significance as well, the first side at the same time representing the will in man, the second, what is usually called the heart, and the third, the intelligence.

Hitler laughed at this. There was no need to labour the comparison, he remarked. He had only meant to show how each individual, in all his feelings and activities, must be included in some section of the party.

“The party takes over the function of what has been society—that is what I wanted them to undentand. The party is all-embracing. It rules our lives in all their breadth and depth. We must therefore develop branches of the party in which the whole of individual life will be reflected. Each activity and each need of the individual will thereby be regulated by the party as the representative of the general good. There will be no licence, no free space, in which the individual belongs to himself. This is Socialism—not such trifles as the private possession of the means of production. Of what importance is that if I range men firmly within a discipline they cannot escape? Let them then own land or factories as much as they please. The decisive factor is that the State, through the party, is supreme over them, regardless whether they are owners or workers. All that, you see, is unessential. Our Socialism goes far deeper. It does not alter external conditions; no, it establishes the relation of the individual to the State, the national community. It does this with the help of one party, or perhaps I should say of one order.”

I could not help remarking that this seemed a novel and harsh doctrine.

Quite true, Hitler replied, and not everyone was capable of understanding it. For this reason, he had felt it necessary to popularise his ideas by means of the diagram.

Then doubtless he would not approve, I suggested, of the kind of state landlordship, or state ownership of the means of production, the dream of some of the most ardent social and economic workers of the party?

Hitler again registered impatience.

“Why bother with such half-measures when I have far more important matters in hand, such as the people themselves?” he exclaimed. “The masses always cling to extremes. After all, what is meant by nationalisation, by socialisation? What has been changed by the fact that a factory is now owned by the State instead of by a Mr. Smith? But once directors and employees alike have been subjected to a universal discipline, there will be a new order for which all expressions used hitherto will be quite inadequate.”

I replied that I was beginning to understand what new and tremendous perspectives this opened.

“The day of individual happiness has passed,” Hitler returned. “Instead, we shall feel a collective happiness. Can there by any greater happiness than a National Socialist meeting in which speakers and audience feel as one? It is the happiness of sharing. Only the early Christian communities could have felt it with equal intensity. They, too, sacrificed their personal happiness for the higher happiness of the community. ...”
[...]
“But in the meantime they have entered a new relation; a powerful social force has caught them up. They themselves are changed. What are ownership and income to that? Why need we trouble to socialise banks and factories? We socialise human beings.”
Hermann Rauschning. (1939). Hitler Speaks. Page 188-192.
https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.505385/page/n187/mode/2up

Prior to the war, a Soviet official criticized National Socialism as being a "decoy Socialism". Not a far-right ideology, but not Socialist enough in his eyes.
Quote
I had endeavoured to strengthen this interest in my conversations with Kalina, the Soviet representative in Danzig at that time, in order to leave our backs free during our negotiations with the Poles.
[...]
We did not, however, reach the point of signing a Soviet-Danzig agreement, on the basis of which Danzig was to have built a number of merchant ships for Russia. The latter country was at that time drawing away from Germany as well as from Danzig. Kalina told me the reasons; he had the good sense to speak quite candidly.

“Your National Socialism,” he told me over an early luncheon, “is certainly revolutionary, but what have you done with this revolutionary force? Your Socialism is only a decoy for the masses. You are carrying out a chaotic, unplanned revolution without a conscious aim. This is not revolution in the sense of a social advance of human society. You want power. You are abusing the the revolutionary strength of Germany. You are exhausting it. For us, you are more dangerous than the old capitalist powers. The German people were on the road to liberty. But you will disappoint them. You will leave behind you a dejected, suspicious people, incapable of productive labour. One day the masses will fall away from you. At that time, perhaps, we shall be able to work together. We shall conclude a pact with the German people when they have corrected their mistake. That day will surely come; we can wait.”
Hermann Rauschning. (1939). Hitler Speaks. Page 131.
https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.505385/page/n131/mode/2up


Highlighted in red, Hitler predicts the shift from False Leftism to True Leftism.
Quote
I explained that I had not meant an alliance between Germany and Russia, but simply a temporary arrangement as a tactical cover for our rear. I quite agreed that a hard-and-fast alliance was not without its dangers for Germany.

“Why?” Hitler asked sharply. “I’ve said nothing like that.”

Surely, I suggested, there would be considerable danger of the Bolshevisation of Germany.

“There is no such danger, and never has been,” Hitler returned.
“Besides, you forget that Russia is not only the land of Bolshevism, but also the greatest continental empire in the world, enormously powerful and capable of drawing the whole of Europe into its embrace. The Russians would take complete possession of their partners. That is the real danger; either you go with them all the way, or you leave them strictly alone.”

Then if I understood him rightly, I said, he drew a line of distinction between Russia as an empire and Russia as the home of Bolshevism. But it was not quite clear to me why an agreement as between sovereign states should not be possible between the Reich and Russia. It seemed to me that the only difficulty would be Russia’s Bolshevism, which would always be a danger for us.

“It is not Germany that will turn Bolshevist, but Bolshevism that will become a sort of National Socialism,” Hitler replied. “Besides, there is more that binds us to Bolshevism than separates us from it. There is, above all, genuine, revolutionary feeling, which is alive everywhere in Russia except where there are Jewish Marxists. I have always made allowance for this circumstance, and given orders that former Communists are to be admitted to the party at once. The petit bourgeois Social-Democrat and the trade-union boss will never make a National Socialist, but the Communist always will.”

I raised cautious objections, pointing out the obvious danger of a planned permeation of party organisations by Communist agents. Most of those who had transferred their allegiance from the one party to the other were engaged as Comintern spies. Hitler rejected these suggestions rather sharply. He would accept the risks, he said.
[...]
“A social revolution would lend me new, unsuspected powers. I do not fear permeation with revolutionary Communist propaganda. But Russia, whether she is to be a partner or an enemy, is our equal and must be watched. ...”
[...]
I remarked that it was curious how many young people—young Conservatives, young Prussians, young soldiers and civil engineers—saw the safeguarding of the future in an alliance with Russia. Evidently, Hitler did not like to hear this.

“I know what you mean—all this chattering about ‘Prussian Socialism’ and so on. Just the thing for our generals, playing at political games of war. Because a military alliance of this kind seems convenient to them, they suddenly discover that they’re not in the least capitalist, in fact that they suffer from a kind of anti-capitalist nostalgia! They are quite happy with their half-knowledge, and think of their Prussian Socialism as a kind of drill-ground discipline in economics and personal liberty. But the matter isn’t as simple as that. I can understand that the engineers are delighted with their ‘plans,’ but this isn’t such a simple matter either. They seem to think it is just a question of exchanging raw material for engineering technique. The engineers, by the way, that they’ve got over there now are peculiarly rotten.”

“These beliefs in a supernational workers’ state,” he continued,  with production plans and production districts can only come out of the misguided, over-rationalised brains of a literary clique that has lost its sound instincts. It’s all convulsive, false, and a public danger because it obstructs National Socialism. ...”
Hermann Rauschning. (1939). Hitler Speaks. Page 134-136.
https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.505385/page/n133/mode/2up

(Note how in the last two paragraphs above, Hitler is criticizing people for NOT BEING SOCIALIST ENOUGH.)

Zea_mays

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Re: National Socialists were socialists
« Reply #18 on: January 20, 2022, 09:32:17 pm »
Rauschning describes not one, but two separate factions of leftists who were plotting coups. I will not belabor the point by quoting the entire section. Below he describes the faction of "radical revolutionaries", led by Roehm, who thought Hitler was betraying Socialism by becoming a "reactionary" rightist-sympathizer who sided with the business class and elite military officer class.

Quote
The choice in 1934 was between continuation of the revolution and a real restoration of order. Up till then, each man had interpreted the German revolution in the light of his own political aims and desires, but it had become suddenly clear, at least to the thoughtful and intelligent, that this German upheaval really was a revolution. But whither was it leading? Evidently to an indescribable destruction of everything that had hitherto been accepted as the basis of all national and social order. Could we look on any longer with our hands folded? Was it not necessary to put an end to it and, even at the risk of another coup, to drive out the whole gang of brown-shirts?

But would this be possible without a civil war? And could Germany afford civil war at this juncture? Although the thinking members of Conservative and Liberal circles, of the intelligent middle classes, had begun to understand what they had done by placing Hitler in power, the formerly Socialist masses of the working-class and the black-coated workers were unreservedly in favour of National Socialism. Perhaps, in fact, it was amongst the masses in this very year of 1934 that National Socialism was strongest. Could one, at the moment of the greatest mass popularity of National Socialism, undertake a coup to remove Hitler for reasons not understood by the masses?

These were thoughts which many “anxious patriots” in every political camp shared with me. From the early days of 1934, the desire had been growing to put an end, cost what it might, to the evil spell which must bring Germany to its ruin. But no hope of any feasible solution seemed to offer.

Suddenly the Roehm affair became acute. The Reichswehr (the army) understood the dangers threatening it from the new revolutionary nihilism.
[...]
Roehm was dissatisfied. He had not been made a minister. The entire meaning of the National Socialist revolution seemed lost to him.
[...]
The entire National Socialist revolution would be bogged if the S.A. were not given a public, legal function, either as militia or as a special corps of the new army. He was not inclined to be made a fool of.
[...]
We discussed the new defensive power of the State, and who ought to command it, who, in fact, ought to create it, the Reichswehr generals or he—Roehm, who had made the party possible in the first place.
[...]
“Adolf is a swine,” he swore. “He will give us all away. He only associates with the reactionaries now. His old friends aren’t good enough for him. Getting matey with the East Prussian generals. They’re his cronies now.”

He was jealous and hurt.

“Adolf is turning into a gentleman. He’s got himself a tail-coat now!” he mocked.

He drank a glass of water and grew calmer.

“Adolf knows exactly what I want. I’ve told him often enough. Not a second edition of the old imperial army. Are we revolutionaries or aren’t we?
[...]
They expect me to hang about with a lot of old pensioners, a herd of sheep. I’m the nucleus of the new army, don’t you see that? Don’t you understand that what’s coming must be new, fresh and unused? The basis must be revolutionary. You can’t inflate it afterwards. You only get the opportunity once to make something new and big that’ll help us to lift the world off its hinges. ...”
[...]
I mention all this because a conversation with Hitler in February of 1934 showed me not only the Führer’s superiority to his entourage, but also the dangerous game he was playing, a game which, when he was close to being deposed, saved him—at the cost of his friend, it is true—and made him one of the commanders of the newly created army. He seemed to have betrayed the revolutionary ideas of this friend, but it was only a seeming betrayal.

At that time every thing was still fluid. Hitler had to adapt the realisation of his “gigantic” plans to the difficult conditions of internal and external politics, and could take only small, cautious steps forward.
Hermann Rauschning. (1939). Hitler Speaks. Page 152-156.
https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.505385/page/n151/mode/2up

As Rauschning observed, the "reactionary" conservatives (including himself) did not favor Hitler, and Hitler remained dedicated to Socialist revolution--just not a chaotically-managed one like in the USSR. Further, Rauschning said Hitler was even considering one-upping Roehm's faction by leading Roehm's Socialist "second revolution" himself! Moreover, Rauschning again indicates that Hitler was not "captive" to the conservative elements in society (who just wanted to use Hitler to control the "prole" masses who looked up to him). Once again, Hitler's ideological split with Roehm was not because Roehm was Socialist, but because Roehm's Socialism was too similar to Marxist Socialism (i.e., not authentically Socialist enough!), and, obviously Roehm's removal from the party is because he was plotting a coup.
Quote
But was he any more fortunate with his “reactionary” friends? That same spring I had addressed a group of heavy industry magnates at the Essen Mining Syndicate (Essener Bergwerksverein), and at a social gathering after the meeting I found them in the blackest depression regarding the political situation. The general complaint in private conversation was: “He’s leading us to ruin.” Some time later the present Commander-in-Chief, General von Brauchitsch, was in Danzig as my guest. On a visit to the German Consul-General, he spoke of his serious apprehensions about the general situation. In the interests of the state, the army could no longer tolerate it, and would seek unqualified changes.

Hitler was isolated.

What, actually, was the aim of the second National Socialist revolution? Hitler knew his party members very well.

“There are people,” he said, “who believe that Socialism means simply their chance to share the spoils, to do business and live a comfortable life.”

Unhappily, this conception had not died out with the Weimar Republic. He had no intention, like Russia, of “liquidating” the possessing class. On the contrary, he would compel it to contribute by its abilities towards the building up of the new order. He could not afford to allow Germany to vegetate for years, as Russia had done, in famine and misery. ... He had no intention of changing this practical arrangement for the sake of continual bickering with so-called old soldiers and over-ardent party members.
[...]
He knew perfectly well that every phase of a revolution meant a new set of rulers. The flood-tide of a second revolution would wash new men to the top. Would it not mean the end of Hitler and his immediate associates? Was it at all possible to keep the reins in one’s hands, once the revolt of the proletarian masses was unchained? In spite of his armchair battles. Hitler was afraid of the masses. He was afraid of his own people.

“Irresponsible elements are at work to destroy all my constructive labours,” he said. “But I shall not allow my work to be shattered either by the Right or the Left.”

He gave out that treacherous elements within the party, agents of Moscow and of the German bourgeois Nationalists, were together plotting the “second” National Socialist revolution in order to overthrow him.

He had received information that Roehm had intentions of kidnapping him—a suspicion which kept cropping up every time Hitler hesitated to strike at the right moment. On the other hand, it was certain that he must eventually—unless his antagonists were exceptionally stupid—have become the secret captive of the Conservative circles, to be employed as the taskmaster of the revolutionaries, the tamer of that wild beast “the masses.”

Hitler for a long time felt tempted to place himself at the head of the radicals of his party and demand a second revolution, thereby retaining at least a semblance of leadership, and possibly even regaining, after some time, the real leadership. Intense struggles for power were at that time going on in the inner circles, very little of which ever came to the ears of the public. But it is to be assumed that the outcome was not an accidental one. For it proved that Hitler, in his insight and his far-sightedness, is infinitely superior not only to his party clique, but also to his Conservative opponents and the leaders of the Reichswehr.
Hermann Rauschning. (1939). Hitler Speaks. Page 162-164.
https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.505385/page/n161/mode/2up

In addition to Roehm's Socialist faction, there was Strasser's Socialist faction. Again, see all the previous posts in the thread about how Hitler went to extreme lengths to keep the Strassers loyal to the party because he valued them, and how Hitler criticized Otto Strasser, not because he was Socialist, but because his Socialism was too Marxist-leaning--and therefore not authentically Socialist enough!

Further, consider that the two most powerful opposition factions in the party were both Socialists. (Meanwhile, there were other far-left former Communists like Joseph Goebbels who remained loyal to Hitler!)
Quote
In the background, one man was waiting: Gregor Strasser, Hitler’s great antagonist within the party. Once again the same alignment took place as in the autumn and winter of 1932, when the party was threatened with a split, when General von Schleicher conceived his plan to make the trade unions and the social wing of the National Socialist movement the mass foundations of his government. This solution, premature in 1932 and distasteful to the big industrialists, seemed now, after the universal muddle created in a year and a half of the National Socialist regime, the only possible alternative both to a fierce revolution of the S.A. and the sterile mass demagogy of Hitler. It would have provided the permanent form of a new constitution, supported by the Reichswehr.
[...]
In Danzig and in most of Northern Germany, Gregor Strasser had always been more esteemed than Hitler himself. Hitler’s nature was incomprehensible to the North German.
[...]
I had been present at the last meeting of leaders before our seizure of power, in Weimar, in the autumn of 1933. Gregor Strasser gave the meeting its character. Hitler was lost in a sea of despondency and accusations on the top of the Obersalzberg. The party’s position was desperate. Strasser was calm, and with assurance and quiet confidence, succeeded in quenching the feeling that the party was at its last gasp. It was he who led the party. To all practical purposes. Hitler had abdicated.

Was not the position essentially the same as that of 1932 and 1933? The difference was merely that Roehm now stood on the one hand, preparing his radical revolt, but on the other, in the background, Strasser, the potential successor, the exiled, the disgraced, the hated rival. Hitler knew that if he took Roehm’s side, the Reichswehr would restore Strasser and split the party. Strasser, the man who had spoken of the anti-capitalist nostalgia of the German people, would return and, together with Conservative, Liberal and Socialist sympathisers, create the new order in Germany. Positions were reversed: Hitler, the friend of heavy industry, became the rebel, the street-corner agitator of proletarian mass revolution, while Strasser, the anti-capitalist, became the friend of generals.

Hitler made his decision. He made it out of hate and jealousy. The 30th June broke. He struck down more than the rebellious S.A. He struck down General von Schleicher. He struck down Gregor Strasser.

The blood-bath might have been greater. A secret plot had been made to murder Hitler and place the blame for his death on the middle class. This was to be the signal for a real “night of long knives.”
Hermann Rauschning. (1939). Hitler Speaks. Page 164-167.
https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.505385/page/n163/mode/2up

Hitler himself makes clear he is not a reactionary:
Quote
“With the old gentleman at death’s door, these criminals make such difficulties for me!” he cried indignantly. “At a time when it is so important to decide on the successor to the Reich presidency, when the choice lies between myself and one of the reactionary crowd! For this alone these people deserve to be shot. Have I not emphasised time and time again that only the inviolable unity of our will can lead our venture to success? Anyone who gets out of step will be shot. Have I not implored these people ten, a hundred, times to follow me? At a moment when everything depends on the party’s being a single, close entity, I must listen to the reactionaries taunting me with the inability to keep order and discipline in my own house! ...”
Hermann Rauschning. (1939). Hitler Speaks. Page 172.
https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.505385/page/n171/mode/2up

After the dust settled from getting rid of Roehm, Hitler made clear he was still a Socialist and remained committed to revolution. Note also that the "Executor of Marxism" section (in the previous post) comes after these sections about purging Roehm and Strasser. I.e., Hitler felt the need to continuously stress his leftism to Rauschning (who Hitler must have mistakenly believed was a loyal up-and-comer in the party) after the purge. This would make no sense if Hitler had been a far-rightist purging the leftist elements of the party! Nor would it have made sense for the right-wing Rauschning to become so anti-NS if Hitler was trying to make the party rightist.
Quote
Shortly after the funeral, Hitler spoke in a circle of his intimates, about the second revolution, and his views were circulated among the initiated members of the party. It was in this way that they came to my ears; I was not present at Hitler’s private celebration of his official recognition as “Führer” of the German Reich.

“My Socialism,” he is reported to have said, “is not the same thing as Marxism. My Socialism is not class war, but order. Whoever imagines Socialism as revolt and mass demagogy is not a National Socialist. Revolution is not games for the masses. Revolution is hard work. The masses see only the finished product, but they are ignorant, and should be ignorant, of the immeasurable amount of hidden labour that must be done before a new step forward can be taken. The revolution cannot be ended. It can never be ended. We are motion itself, we are eternal revolution. We shall never allow ourselves to be held down to one permanent condition.”
[...]
He was not yet, he continued, in a position to tell them all that he had in mind. But they could rest assured that Socialism, as the Party understood it, was not concerned with the happiness of the individual, but with the greatness and future of the whole people. It was an heroic Socialism—the community of solemnly sworn brothers-in-arms having no individual possessions, but sharing everything in common.
Hermann Rauschning. (1939). Hitler Speaks. Page 175-176.
https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.505385/page/n175/mode/2up

Also, Hitler personally requested that Roehm rejoin the SA as its leader in 1930, as Roehm had resigned and left Germany a number of years prior. Hitler needed a new leader for the SA because he had just put down a coup within the SA led by Walter Stennes. Why would Hitler make this request to a radical revolutionary Socialist, unless Hitler genuinely trusted him? If Hitler was a far-rightist there is no way that he would have tried to consolidate his control over the SA by placing a revolutionary leftist in charge! Roehm's leftism was not the problem. It was refusal to uphold the Leader Principle and refusal to completely repudiate Marxist Socialism.
Quote
When in April 1925 Hitler and Ludendorff disapproved of the proposals under which Röhm was prepared to integrate the 30,000-strong Frontbann into the SA, Röhm resigned from all political groups and military brigades on 1 May 1925. He felt great contempt for the "legalistic" path the party leaders wanted to follow and sought seclusion from public life.[11] In 1928, he accepted a post in Bolivia as adviser to the Bolivian Army, where he was given the rank of lieutenant colonel. In the autumn of 1930, Röhm received a telephone call from Hitler requesting his return to Germany.[11]

In September 1930, as a consequence of the Stennes Revolt in Berlin, Hitler assumed supreme command of the SA as its new Oberster SA-Führer. He sent a personal request to Röhm, asking him to return to serve as the SA's Chief of Staff. Röhm accepted this offer and began his new assignment on 5 January 1931.[27] He brought radical new ideas to the SA, and appointed several close friends to its senior leadership.
[...]
In June 1931, the Münchener Post, a Social Democratic newspaper, began attacking Röhm and the SA regarding homosexuality in its ranks and then in March 1932, the paper obtained and published some private letters of his in which Röhm described himself as "same-sex orientated" (gleichgeschlechtlich). These letters had been confiscated by the Berlin police back in 1931 and subsequently passed along to the journalist Helmuth Klotz.[33][34] Röhm acknowledged that the letters were genuine, and as a result of the scandal, he became the first openly gay politician in history.[34]

Hitler was aware of Röhm's homosexuality. Their friendship shows in that Röhm remained one of the few intimates allowed to use the familiar German du (the German familiar form of "you") when conversing with Hitler.[12] In turn, Röhm was the only Nazi leader who dared to address Hitler by his first name "Adolf" or his nickname "Adi" rather than "mein Führer".[35] Their close association led to rumors that Hitler himself was homosexual.[36] Unlike many in the Nazi hierarchy, Röhm never fell victim to Hitler's "arresting personality" nor did he come fully under his spell, which made him unique.[37]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_R%C3%B6hm

(Also, if Hitler was a homophobic rightist, why would he be close friends with the first openly-"gay" politician in modern history? And note that it was the False Left Social Democratic party who was being homophobic!)

----

Now, having read all this information, it is crystal clear why the "conservative reactionary" Rauschning quickly became anti-NS:
Quote
Hermann Adolf Reinhold Rauschning (7 August 1887 – February 8, 1982) was a German conservative reactionary[2] who briefly joined the Nazi movement before breaking with it.[3] He was the President of the Free City of Danzig from 1933 to 1934, during which he led the Senate of the Free City of Danzig. In 1934, he renounced Nazi Party membership and in 1936 emigrated from Germany. He eventually settled in the United States and began openly denouncing Nazism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermann_Rauschning

Zea_mays

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Re: National Socialists were socialists
« Reply #19 on: January 20, 2022, 09:47:40 pm »
Some quotes from Otto Wagener's memoirs.

Quote
Otto Wagener (29 April 1888 – 9 August 1971) was a German major general and, for a period, Adolf Hitler's economic advisor and confidant.


Look how Hitler traces back Western thought to ancient Greece and the Renaissance, and criticizes it. Then he deeply criticizes traditionalism and says he must manifest something new.
Quote
Hitler had talked himself into considerable excitement, and without pausing for any length of time, he continued.

“You still have not begun to understand that we live at a turning point of history, which, granted, has yet to reach its apogee. The individualism, which, apparent already in classical Greece, marked the Middle Ages and once more put its stamp on the modern period, has begun to falter. Not because of any changes in mankind or nations or on the basis of a new political or cultural orientation, but primarily through a complete transformation of economic life, through the development from trades to industrialization, from the journeyman and independent master craftsman to the factory hand, from small individually owned businesses to large corporations, from the personal relationship between the employer and his employee to the impersonal condition of dependence of labor on capital.

“These represent the problems of our century. To recognize them is everyone’s duty, to solve them is the task of governments. But when governments are made up only of those men who are sent to parliaments by the universal and equal ballot of the great masses, it hardly seems likely that the truly best and most suitable men will be in the government. A very busy, outstanding lawyer or a famous scientist, a great doctor or a leading industrialist simply does not have time to run for office and to devote four weeks of his life to campaigning. And then, he can’t spend his valuable time doing battle in the Reichstag.
[...]
“Then the highbrows appear on the scene and appeal to the law and the authority of tradition. These legitimists do not see that this law and this tradition were born in individualist thinking and are the pillars of a past time. What counts is to establish new laws and a new authority in place of old traditions. If this is not done, they will find that the road to socialist reconstruction will not be traveled according to plan and peaceably, but that the revolution will topple those pillars, bringing down the structure of individualism. But most of them have never even read Marx, and they view the Bolshevik revolution as a private Russian affair.
Otto Wagener. (written in 1946, first published in German in 1978). Hitler: Memoirs of a Confidant. Edited by Henry Ashby Turner, Jr., translated by Ruth Hein (1985). Page 12-13.
https://archive.org/details/wagenerhitlermemoirsofaconfidant/page/n41/mode/2up

Commentary: Hitler is anti-human-rights, because it is a selfish individual-centric construct that is ideologically incompatible with Socialism (which looks after the welfare of society as a whole).
Quote
“Here you see the difference between the former age of individualism and the socialism that is on the horizon. In the past—that is, for most people it is still the present—the individual is everything, everything is directed at maintaining his life and improving his existence. Everything focuses on him. He is the center. Everyone is a central figure, as is officially acknowledged in his vested human rights.

“In the socialism of the future, on the other hand, what counts is the whole, the community of the Volk. The individual and his life play only a subsidiary role. He can be sacrificed—he is prepared to sacrifice himself should the whole demand it, should the commonweal call for it.

“Since the introduction of universal military training, this idea has taken concrete shape. Laws have been made to punish anyone who dodges military service by self-mutilation or desertion, even prescribing death for flight in the face of the enemy. Here, therefore, the basic socialist principle prevails. But in the rest of life, individualism, liberalism, egotism continue to triumph. Even during a war someone who is not in the military can fill his pockets and amass a fortune, which he will sooner or later lose to someone else, while the poor soldiers at the front fight and give their lives for the community.

“Aren’t these liberals, these reprobate defenders of individualism, ashamed to see the tears of the mothers and wives, or don’t these cold-blooded accountants even notice? Have they already grown so inhuman that they are no longer capable of feeling? It’s understandable why bolshevism simply removed such creatures. They were worthless to humanity, nothing but an encumbrance to their Volk. Even the bees get rid of the drones when they can no longer be of service to the hive. The Bolshevik procedures are thus quite natural.

“But that’s precisely the problem we have set out to solve: to convert the German Volk to socialism without simply killing off the old individualists, without destruction of property and values, without extermination of culture and morality and the ethics ...”
Otto Wagener. (written in 1946, first published in German in 1978). Hitler: Memoirs of a Confidant. Edited by Henry Ashby Turner, Jr., translated by Ruth Hein (1985). Page 16-17.
https://archive.org/details/wagenerhitlermemoirsofaconfidant/page/n43/mode/2up

Commentary: Hitler will become MORE SOCIALIST once the state's authority is secure and not in a time of war or crisis.
Quote
“... That, furthermore, we must travel the road to the socialist reorganization of things—of that I never had any doubt. But socialist experiments are better made once order has been established. Otherwise, they slide all too smoothly into Bolshevik channels.”
Otto Wagener. (written in 1946, first published in German in 1978). Hitler: Memoirs of a Confidant. Edited by Henry Ashby Turner, Jr., translated by Ruth Hein (1985). Page 159.
https://archive.org/details/wagenerhitlermemoirsofaconfidant/page/n187/mode/2up

Hitler acknowledges Socialism's ancient roots:
Quote
“Socialism is a political problem. And politics is of no concern to the economy,” he once said to me in the course of one of our conversations. “Socialism is a question of attitude toward life, of the ethical outlook on life of all who live together in a common ethnic or national space. Socialism is a Weltanschauung!

“But in actual fact there is nothing new about this Weltanschauung. Whenever I read the New Testament Gospels and the revelations of various of the prophets and imagine myself back in the era of the Roman and late Hellenistic, as well as the Oriental, world, I am astonished at all that has been made of the teachings of these divinely inspired men, especially Jesus Christ, which are so clear and unique, heightened to religiosity. These were the ones who created this new worldview which we now call socialism, they established it, they taught it and they lived it!  But the communities that called themselves Christian churches did not understand it! Or if they did, they denied Christ and betrayed him! For they transformed the holy idea of Christian socialism into its opposite! They killed it, just as, at the time, the Jews nailed Jesus to the cross; they buried it, just as the body of Christ was buried. But they allowed Christ to be resurrected, instigating the belief that his teachings, too, were reborn!

“It is in this that the monstrous crime of these enemies of Christian socialism lies! With the basest hypocrisy they carry before them the cross—the instrument of that murder which, in their thoughts, they commit over and over—as a new divine sign of Christian awareness, and allow mankind to kneel to it. They even pretend to be preaching the teachings of Christ. But their lives and deeds are a constant blow against these teachings and their Creator and a defamation of God!

“We are the first to exhume these teachings! Through us alone, and not until now, do these teachings celebrate their resurrection! Mary and Magdalene stood at the empty tomb. For they were seeking the dead man! But we intend to raise the treasures of the living Christ!

“Herein lies the essential element of our mission: we must bring back to the German Volk the recognition of those teachings! For what did the falsification of the original concept of Christian love, of the community of fate before God and of socialism lead to? By their fruits ye shall know them!
[...]
Christ’s deep understanding of the necessity of a socialist community of men and nations.
[...]
You see, Wagener: our mission is not an economic one. Of course, the economy and its ethics must also be adapted to the conditions of this socialism. I agree with all your plans. But they are not primary. To fill the Volk with the reborn faith and the Weltanschauung of Him who once before was a savior in the peoples’ deepest hour of need—that is primary! And since the old people are usually inextricably enmeshed in their economic interests and egotistical petty shopkeepers’ mentality, we can, in the main, seek support only from the young people. It is youth that will once more conquer the tme kingdom of heaven for its Volk and for all mankind!”
Otto Wagener. (written in 1946, first published in German in 1978). Hitler: Memoirs of a Confidant. Edited by Henry Ashby Turner, Jr., translated by Ruth Hein (1985). Page 139-141.
https://archive.org/details/wagenerhitlermemoirsofaconfidant/page/n167/mode/2up


Hitler says that the USSR is not actually Socialist, but practices "state capitalism". This is, in fact, a criticism that you can find many present-day Communists make against the USSR and historic Communist regimes. The rest of this passage about making conditions better for the worker so they aren't slaves of capitalism almost sounds like something a typical Bernie-Sandersite would say, LOL. Also note that Hitler once again says Marxism and its implementations will always fail to bring about true Socialism, but National Socialism will achieve what they fail to do.
Quote
I will never forget one occasion, when Feder, wearing a supercilious smile, came to my office to explain that Hitler completely disavowed my socialist ideas and plans. He was, Feder claimed, an admitted follower of individualism and economic liberalism. When I remonstrated, Feder assured me that he had just been talking with Hitler and that in a half-hour discourse Hitler had expounded to him the correctness of the principles of individualism.

I immediately went down to Hitler’s office—we were still in the Brown House on Brienner Strasse—and no sooner did he see me than he called out, “I’m glad you’re here. I was just weighing the pros and cons of liberalism with Feder. And I made an astonishing discovery.

“Individualism, which is in the process of being replaced by socialism—and we’re determined to lend a helping hand to abolish and replace it—is actually already being buried by industrialization. Yes, it’s already in its grave. For, thanks to growing industrialism, with all its consequences—associations, corporations, trusts, and monopolies—actually only a very few people are left who might imagine themselves to be living their individual lives. But even they are under a misapprehension. For they, too, are slaves of those who wield power. All the others, anyway, have become merely working links in the universal enterprise. From early to late, men toil on perpetual treadmills. And when all is said and done, when they fall, exhausted, into bed at night, they have worked for no more than preserving their primitive slaves’ lives, perhaps at one time or another a little bit enhanced. But even then their life has no other meaning.

“So all that is left of individualism is legislation, civil law, as well as the piles of paragraphs in the democratic constitution, with their mentions and guarantees of universal human rights and fundamental rights that, economically speaking, have long ago ceased to exist.

“Industrialization has deprived the individual of all liberty, placed him in thrall to capital and the machine. The state is not the organization for self-rule by free individuals who call themselves citizens, but the central organization for the mills of labor growing out of industrialization, in which any independence or individualism is ground to dust. This is most crudely evident in the Bolshevik state, with its state capitalism.

“But if we realize our social economy exactly as we discussed more than once, we will come to liberate the individual from the domination of capital and all its institutions. To begin with, labor will seize possession of capital. But what is ethically most significant is the following: when the purchasing power of wages increases—when, as you say, it might even double—the initial effect will be that production will have to increase, since the demand will be greater. But next comes the great era of increasing personal gratification, with the result that the worker will still earn a sufficiency if, instead of working eight hours a day, he puts in only seven or even six.

“This moment signifies the rebirth of individuality, of the possibility of living for oneself outside the hours that serve material needs, and of devoting oneself to hobbies, cultural interests, art, science, life in general, and the family.

“To this extent, then, socialism —our socialism—leads back to individuality, and with it to the strongest impetus to a personal, racially defined, and altogether universal human evolution.”

When I told Hitler that this view without any doubt confirmed us in our systematic elaboration of our socio-economic tasks, he replied:

“Without a doubt in the world. The more we examine the conclusions to be drawn from our ideas and plans, the more surely we arrive at the conviction that they are correct and represent the genuine solution of the problems of socialism, which appear so difficult. What Marxism, Leninism, and Stalinism failed to accomplish we shall be in a position to achieve. And our synthesis is not a compromise—I should reject any such thing—it is, instead, the radical removal of all the false results of industrialization and unrestrained economic liberalism, and the redirection of this line of development to the service of humanity and the individual.”
Otto Wagener. (written in 1946, first published in German in 1978). Hitler: Memoirs of a Confidant. Edited by Henry Ashby Turner, Jr., translated by Ruth Hein (1985). Page 148-149.
https://archive.org/details/wagenerhitlermemoirsofaconfidant/page/n177/mode/2up

After the war in his memoir, Wagener revealed that, like Goebbels, his faith in Hitler was somewhat shaken when it was clear just how strongly Hitler rejected the INTERNATIONALIST INTERPRETATION OF SOCIALISM (i.e. Marxism/Communism). It seems that in Wagener's opinion, he faults Hitler for being too nationalist (which Wagener seems to think risks potentially derailing the Socialist cause). I suppose Wagener did not realize that even Stalin had abandoned the practicality of a truly internationalist Socialism with his "Socialism in one country" policy. Indeed, Wagener concedes that his own ideas of Socialism probably would not have succeeded to the extent that Hitler's did.
Quote
I was crestfallen. For the first time, I understood clearly the difference between my way of thinking and his, I was a socialist, an advocate of cooperation, a Christian, even in reference to the relationship and cooperation among nations and peoples beyond their own borders; and he was a national socialist, a “Zeissist,” a nationalist of the English stamp, whose socialist thinking was only for his Volk and within his own Volk. Toward the rest of the world, however, he was, in the last analysis, a crass economic liberalist, egotist, and imperialist. From this angle, his Central Europe took on a quite different significance from the one that had appeared during the Hamburg discussion. At that time, granted, rearmament was also a prerequisite for such plans. Who was it who repeatedly induced him to accept the idea of such power politics?

It is, I admit, hard to say which concept is correct. At the time I did not dare, and to this day (1946) I do not dare, simply to reject Hitler’s view. On the contrary, I must admit that all Hitler’s actions and successes in foreign affairs are such as to make his view appear the better one and to seriously shake mine. Furthermore, the respect paid to National Socialist Germany abroad and the rehabilitation of the Germans’ standing among other nations prove that the world appreciates Hitler and the road he has taken. In the final analysis, it will have to be left to events to show which road would have been the better one—though even then, there is no way of testing whether the pursuit of my way of thinking could have led to the desired goal.
Otto Wagener. (written in 1946, first published in German in 1978). Hitler: Memoirs of a Confidant. Edited by Henry Ashby Turner, Jr., translated by Ruth Hein (1985). Page 164.
https://archive.org/details/wagenerhitlermemoirsofaconfidant/page/n193/mode/2up


Ok, I think that is enough quotes from Wagener to demonstrate the point. Socialism (with a small "s", and therefore talking about ideological socialism rather than just saying the name of the NS party) appears 174 times if you do a text search of the book. I'm sure there are plenty more great quotes.

----


All these quotes from Wagener (a self-proclaimed Socialist who was loyal to Hitler) express the same sentiments as those found in the work of Heiden (a liberal/left-leaning Jewish journalist), Rauschning (a "reactionary conservative" who quickly became anti-NS and left the party), Otto Strasser (a self-proclaimed Socialist who was accused by Hitler of being a Marxist Socialist, and therefore _not authentically Socialist enough_, who Hitler nevertheless wanted to keep in the party if possible), as well as in Hitler's own speeches.

Now we know why False Leftists never cite primary sources regarding Hitler's own words on his Socialist beliefs when trying to "disprove" that he was a leftist. (And, if they do, it's only to use the circular reasoning that, by definition, since Hitler rejected the Marxist/Communist interpretation, he cannot be "real" a Socialist. eyeroll.)


With the information that has been provided in this thread, I think we have more than enough evidence to conclusively prove that National Socialism was indeed leftist and an authentically Socialist ideology. (But feel free to post more evidence, of course.)
« Last Edit: January 24, 2022, 11:41:05 pm by Zea_mays »

90sRetroFan

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Re: National Socialists were socialists
« Reply #20 on: January 21, 2022, 10:51:57 pm »
"pre-state hunter-gatherer societies theoretically resembled a communist society:"

This is correct in that communism does not care about non-humans. This is a fundamental inferiority of communism that leftist anti-communists should spend more time attacking communism with.

"this raises the question as to what "merit" means."

Exactly. The implication is that there should be distinct versions of socialism for each distinct conception of merit. This demands every socialist first answer the question of precisely what they mean by merit before even beginning to expound on how they plan to promote it. Thus we can evaluate different systems of socialism on two axes: 1) whether or not we agree on their proposed notion of merit; 2) how effective we consider their proposed methods of promoting their notion of merit.

The only thing common among all socialists should be the belief that unrestricted competition does not promote merit. Which brings us to your next point:

"Obviously, a rightist would disagree with socialism entirely since they believe an individual possessing a natural competitive advantage _is_ merit/virtue in and of itself. "

Yes. To make things clear, though, we need a term to explicitly describe this way of thinking. I suggest competitionism. Capitalism should be re-understood as only one of many possible forms of competitionism. The progressive call for innovationism to replace capitalism, for example:

https://trueleft.createaforum.com/true-left-vs-false-left/progressive-yahwism/msg10496/#msg10496

should thus be viewed as conflict between two different forms of competitionism, since doubtless those more efficient at innovating machines (who may turn out indeed not to be the capitalists) will sooner or later gain a runaway competitive advantage over those less efficient at this. This is why we call progressives False Leftists: they may appear opposed to the current form of competitionism, but merely wish to replace it by a different - probably worse - form of competitionism.

Democracy is also a form of competitionism (hence democrats are necessarily also False Leftists). Being popular with the majority of the demos is a competitive advantage, and is likely to be negatively correlated with any ethical conception of merit, since trying to stop the demos from oppressing those outside the demos is probably the fastest way to become unpopular with the majority of the demos!

And so on.

"business-owners (which actually includes non-evil people and people who managed to build a successful business due to actual talent, as well as non-productive parasitic elites like financial speculators and talentless hacks who inherited great wealth)."

The issue of what you call "talent" is where we must be most careful. How much of talent is merit, and how much is competitive advantage? If A is content to serve just enough customers to make a humble living, whereas B supplying a similar product wants to keep expanding its customer base, the predictable eventual result absent state intervention is that B will drive A out of business over time. Is this a problem or not? For those who only care about product quality, so long as B's product is as good as A's, B deserves to win on account of its higher commercial aggressiveness. I of course see it differently: I consider B* to be inferior precisely because it is more aggressive, and believe the state should intervene to keep A in business by limiting B's ability to expand, such as by putting a cap on the maximum quantity of assets anyone can own. (As a National Socialist I would additionally eliminate B's bloodline.) Here we have two notions of merit leading to different conclusions about how the state should respond.

(* To state the obvious, B is how Hitler saw Jewish businesses.)

"Hitler says Jesus is one of the originators of real Socialism"

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.

Quote
Tier 0. (Temperament)
   - Leftism

Tier 1. (Abstract/general attitudes)
   - Socialism (further expanded below)
   - Enlightenment-based forms of liberalism(?) (not listed below)
   - others?

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.....
« Last Edit: January 22, 2022, 03:31:46 am by 90sRetroFan »

Zea_mays

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Re: National Socialists were socialists
« Reply #21 on: January 24, 2022, 11:59:56 pm »
Quote
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:
Quote
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]
[...]
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!
Quote
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]
[...]
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.
[...]
On the basis of U.S. theory and practice, commercial Darwinism operates in markets worldwide, pitting corporation against corporation in struggles for survival.[65]
[...]
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

Quote
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.)


Quote
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.

Quote
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!

Quote
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

Zea_mays

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Re: National Socialists were socialists
« Reply #22 on: January 25, 2022, 12:14:50 am »
Some information from Alfred Rosenberg's memoirs.


During the German civil war in 1919, the communist Bavarian Soviet Republic spared DAP co-founder Dietrich Eckart because of his leftism:
Quote
He published a leaflet, To all workers, in which he called them to arms against usury, and which he signed with his full name and address. He printed quite a large edition, and hired two taxicabs from which we scattered them on the streets of Munich. Since many such pamphlets were printed and distributed in these days of revolutionary fermentation, Eckart at first had no difficulties. In fact, when he was about to be arrested during the Raterepublik (the short-lived Communist regime in Munich), and placed among the hostages, this pamphlet may very well have saved his life, for his own janitor and the men who came to arrest him declared with one accord that the author of such a leaflet could not possibly by a reactionary. He went free.
Alfred Rosenberg. (written 1946, published in German 1949). Memoirs. (English translator and date unspecified). Pages not numbered.
https://archive.org/details/MemoirsOfAlfredRosenberg/page/n1/mode/2up

Actual rightists in the 1930s accused National Socialists of being nothing more than Communists:
Quote
In their attacks our opponents spared us absolutely nothing. For the middle classes we were camouflaged Bolshevists and atheists, for the Marxists, agents of Deterding, capitalistic varlets, and monarchistic reactionaries.

Again, right-leaning citizens in the 1920s had been prejudiced against the National Socialist party because it had the word "Socialist" in it. I.e., they perceived it to be leftist.
Quote
In later years Heinrich Lohse, the son of Holstein peasants, told me repeatedly that it was from me that he had first heard details about Hitler, his speeches, the Feldherrnhalle and our program. The decision he made that day at Weimar was final. So he went to call on his hard-headed, mistrustful peasants who, like those in Oldenburg, were constantly up in arms against any name that contained the world Socialist. It took a long time to break down their resistance, but he did finally succeed.


Rosenberg criticizes Goebbels for being too egocentric (and he seems quite jealous that the propaganda-minded, rather than intellectual-minded, Goebbels was favored by Hitler over himself), but it was obvious to Rosenberg that Goebbels was indeed a leftist:
Quote
It is not easy for me to talk about Doctor Joseph Göbbels. From a purely human point of view, his dying in Berlin, together with his wife and five children, takes the sting out of much that is past. Nevertheless, his activities from 1925 until the collapse remain something in the development of the National Socialist revolution that must be studied from a historical point of view. And that, whether open or secret, they were of tremendous importance, I know very well without being cognisant of details. He was the Mephisto of our once so straightforward movement.
[...]
Hitler and I looked at each other and nodded. I was quite willing to forget any instinctive aversion I might have felt. The revolution set him afire. Stürtz and others told me how they all wanted to re-enact, so to speak, certain parallel roles that had once been played in the French Revolution. To become important by joining the opposition was in Göbbels's mind, too, when he came to the fore with articles and speeches. Considering his character and the depth of his social thinking, I came to the conclusion that there was no obstacle that would have prevented Göbbels from joining the Communists. But somehow and somewhere within himself-- this much I am willing to admit unreservedly -- he, too, loved Germany. That's why he turned to Hitler. This was the good that existed even in Göbbels, and that gave to all his activities the magnetic power of the genuine.

Hermann Goering also blamed Goebbels for having too strong of an impact on Hitler.
Quote
He influenced Hitler to become anti-Semitic more than Hitler had been before. Hitler used to come to my house once in a while for a cup of coffee, and because I led a normal life, he would leave about nine o'clock. I was in the habit of retiring early. However, Hitler used to spend practically all of his nights, sometimes until four a.m., with Goebbels and his family. God knows what evil influence Goebbels had on him during those long visits.
   -Hermann Goering to Leon Goldensohn, May 24, 1946
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Joseph_Goebbels#Quotes_about_Goebbels

Again, recall that Goebbels was a straight-up Communist far-leftist when he joined the party. Hitler would not have become so close to him if Hitler was a far-rightist. (I doubt Rosenberg read Goebbel's diary where he said he was indeed a Communist!)
https://trueleft.createaforum.com/true-left-vs-false-left/national-socialists-were-socialists/msg10621/#msg10621


Back to Rosenberg. Hitler demanded social justice and a Socialism that did not involve itself in nonsensical class warfare:
Quote
In view of all these contradictory forces and developments, Adolf Hitler, who had encountered such problems in Austria, before serving for four and a half years as a soldier in the German army, not only recognised the necessity of national unity above everything else, but was also willing to press to the hilt the demand for social justice. The National Socialist Party entered the battle. Adolf Hitler became its leader. The point of departure of his way of thinking was this: If so many honest men stand in each of the two opposing camps, no matter how their individual programs look, they must be impelled by decent motives. But if the totality of the bourgeoisie and the totality of the proletariat are such bitter enemies, there must needs be spiritual, political and social causes that prevent understanding, to say nothing of co-operation in regard to all great tasks confronting the Reich. Without going into economic details. National Socialism affirmed the demand for justice for the working classes. But the conviction that social justice could be secured only within the national framework became ever more firm. And here basic dogmas barred the way, dogmas which had been taught only too well to a people more often than not inclined to place veracity above practicality. The class war was looked upon as something factual, and Marxism had not been able to offer anything beyond still more class war -- An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.
[...]
It was Adolf Hitler who declared war against all this. ... Hitler had come to the conclusion that a just socialism had, PER SE, nothing to do with class war and internationalism. To perpetuate class war was wrong. It would have to be eliminated.

Quote
Hitler spoke to several small gatherings of the party, which was now no longer called the German Workers' Party, but the National Socialist German Workers' Party. This change indicated the union of a cleansed nationalism and a purified socialism.

Rosenberg stresses how similar his views were to Hitler. Since the other quotes have established Hitler was indeed a leftist Socialist and also quite close to the leftist Socialist Goebbels, then, transitively, Rosenberg must have been leftist as well.

Although, briefly skimming through his memoirs, it seems his ideological views were a bit traditionalist in some respects. Perhaps this is why Hitler favored Goebbels more--he was more anti-traditionalist and understood the mission of reshaping and manifesting something entirely new in society? It seems Rosenberg's intellectualism may have prejudiced him to become too attached to the establishment culture to be able to fully imagine a radically new society?
Quote
I must say that it was absolutely uncanny how similar our opinions frequently were. Once, after I had written an article on the problems of alcohol for the Folkish Observer, and was just reading the galley proofs. Hitler called on me at the editorial office. He had with him an article on the problems of alcohol which he wanted me to publish in the near future. With a laugh I showed him mine. Then we read each other's articles and found that, starting from different premises, we had reached identical conclusions. When I told him that I naturally would kill my own article. Hitler said, under no circumstances; it was excellent, and it would be a good thing if both of them were published. Thus the Folkish Observer published the two articles in the same issue. Hitler insisted that most of the important speeches to be made at party conventions be submitted to him. Once, when I personally handed him one of mine, he read it immediately and said: This is as much like mine as if we had compared notes beforehand. I might describe the gradually developing personal relationship somewhat like this: he esteemed me highly, but he did not love me. That PER SE was not particularly surprising. For one who came from the Gulf of Bothnia brought along an entirely different temperament than one from Braunau on the Inn. What was surprising, on the contrary, was our miraculously similar judgement regarding the basic traits of so many problems.

Zea_mays

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Re: National Socialists were socialists
« Reply #23 on: January 25, 2022, 12:37:02 am »
Even in Mein Kampf, which we've seemed to dismiss as mostly propaganda before, Hitler expresses similar left-wing criticisms of Marxist Socialism, consistent with all the other quotes that have been posted. Although, being a work of propaganda, he is obviously not as explicit in how firmly leftist he is, compared to the quotes from private conversations.


Commentary: Hitler criticizes Marxism for not being a radical opposition to capitalism and Western Civilization, and that, even if it wanted to, it does not have the ideological ability to overthrow Western Civilization to replace it with something meaningful!
Quote
Even if Marxism were a thousandfold capable of taking over the economic life as we now have it and maintaining it in operation under Marxist direction, such an achievement would prove nothing; because, on the basis of its own principles, Marxism would never be able to create something which could supplant what exists to-day.

And Marxism itself has furnished the proof that it cannot do this. Not only has it been unable anywhere to create a cultural or economic system of its own; but it was not even able to develop, according to its own principles, the civilization and economic system it found ready at hand. It has had to make compromises, by way of a return to the principle of personality, just as it cannot dispense with that principle in its own organization.

The racial Weltanschauung is fundamentally distinguished from the Marxist by reason of the fact that the former recognizes the significance of race and therefore also personal worth and has made these the pillars of its structure. These are the most important factors of its Weltanschauung.

If the National Socialist Movement should fail to understand the fundamental importance of this essential principle, if it should merely varnish the external appearance of the present State and adopt the majority principle, it would really do nothing more than compete with Marxism on its own ground. For that reason it would not nave the right to call itself a Weltanschauung, If the social programme of the movement consisted in eliminating personality and putting the multitude in its place, then National Socialism would be corrupted with the poison of Marxism, just as our national-bourgeois parties are.
Adolf Hitler (1925-1926). Mein Kampf. Translation by James Murphy (1939). Page 374.
https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.526617/page/n375/mode/2up

Again, Marxism is not actually a radical opponent of rightism (i.e. the bourgeois establishment, which Hitler had mentioned in previous speeches represents mainstream conservatism):
Quote
Thus the Marxist doctrine is the concentrated extract of the mentality which underlies the general concept of life today. For this reason alone it is out of the question and even ridiculous to think that what is called our bourgeois world can put up any effective fight against Marxism. For this bourgeois world is permeated with all those same poisons and its conception of life in general differs from Marxism only in degree and in the character of the persons who hold it. The bourgeois world is Marxist but believes in the possibility of a certain group of people — that is to say, the bourgeoisie — being able to dominate the world, while Marxism itself systematically aims at delivering the world into the hands of the Jews.
Adolf Hitler (1925-1926). Mein Kampf. Translation by James Murphy (1939). Page 321.
https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.526617/page/n323/mode/2up

Commentary: Hitler acknowledging the National Socialist party foremost had appeal to leftists!
Quote
The fact that millions of our people yearn at heart for a radical change in our present conditions is proved by the profound discontent which exists among them. This feeling is manifested in a thousand ways. Some express it in a form of discouragement and despair. Others show it in resentment and anger and indignation. Among some the profound discontent calls forth an attitude of indifference, while it urges others to violent manifestations of wrath. Another indication of this feeling may be seen on the one hand in the attitude of those who abstain from voting at elections and, on the other, in the large numbers of those who side with the fanatical extremists of the left wing.

To these latter people our young movement had to appeal first of all.
[...]
Looked at from the purely political point of view, the situation in 1918 was as follows: A nation had been torn into two parts. One part, which was by far the smaller of the two, contained the intellectual classes of the nation, from which all those employed in physical labour were excluded. On the surface these intellectual classes appeared to be national-minded, but that word meant nothing else to them except a very vague and feeble concept of the duty to defend what they called the interests of the State, which in turn seemed identical with those of the dynastic regime.
[...]
Over against this class stood the broad masses of manual labourers who were organized in movements with a more or less radically Marxist tendency. These organized masses were firmly determined to break any kind of intellectual resistance by the use of brute force. They had no nationalist tendencies whatsoever and deliberately repudiated the idea of advancing the interests of the nation as such. On the contrary, they promoted the interests of die foreign oppressor. Numerically this class embraced the majority of the population and, what is more important, included all those elements of the nation without whose collaboration a national resurgence was not only a practical impossibility but was even inconceivable.
Adolf Hitler (1925-1926). Mein Kampf. Translation by James Murphy (1939). Page 277-278.
https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.526617/page/n279/mode/2up

Summary: Communist parties gave orders to their followers to attend National Socialist meetings and disrupt them, but what ended up happening is that the Communists ended up joining the National Socialist party instead! In fact, the Communists were losing so many members that they had to change their tactics and forbid their members from attending further NS speeches!
Quote
Appeals were then made to the ‘class-conscious proletariat’ to attend our meetings in masses and strike with the clinched hand of the proletarian at the representatives of a ‘monarchist and reactionary agitation.’

Our meetings suddenly became packed with work-people fully three-quarters of an hour before the proceedings were scheduled to begin. These gatherings resembled a powder cask ready to explode at any moment; and the fuse was conveniently at hand. But matters always turned out differently. People came as enemies and left, not perhaps prepared to join us, yet in a reflective mood and disposed critically to examine the correctness of their own doctrine. Gradually as time went on my three-hour lectures resulted in supporters and opponents becoming united in one single enthusiastic group of people. Every signal for the breaking-up of the meeting failed.
[...]
Yet when, after two, three and even eight meetings, it was realized that to break up these gatherings was easier said than done and that every meeting resulted in a decisive weakening of the red fighting forces, then suddenly the other pass-word was introduced: ‘Proletarians, comrades and comradesses, avoid meetings of the National Socialist agitators.’

The same eternally alternating tactics were also to be observed in the Red Press. Soon they tried to silence us but discovered the uselessness of such an attempt. After that they swung round to the opposite tactics. Daily ‘reference’ was made to us solely for the purpose of absolutely ridiculing us in the eyes of the working-classes. After a time these gentlemen must have felt that no harm was being done to us but that, on the contrary, we were reaping an advantage in that people were asking themselves why so much space was being devoted to a subject which was supposed to be so ludicrous. People became curious.
Adolf Hitler (1925-1926). Mein Kampf. Translation by James Murphy (1939). Page 402.
https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.526617/page/n403/mode/2up

See also the previous post about "Beefsteak Nazis"--i.e. a joke about just many many National Socialists were former Communists:
https://trueleft.createaforum.com/true-left-vs-false-left/national-socialists-were-socialists/msg10637/#msg10637


Quote
The members of our Movement are not recruited from circles which are habitually indifferent to public affairs, but mostly from among men who hold more or less extreme views. Such being the case, it is only natural that their understanding of foreign politics should suffer from the prejudice and inadequate knowledge of those circles to which they were formerly attached by political and ideological ties. And this is true not merely of the men who came to us from the Left.
Adolf Hitler (1925-1926). Mein Kampf. Translation by James Murphy (1939). Page 522.
https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.526617/page/n523/mode/2up

Hitler admits social justice warriors are Aryans. Or, rather, that desire for social justice is an innate "racial" quality of Aryans. Communism and other forms of False Leftism claim to fulfill social justice in order to herd people away from REAL solutions.
Quote
The Jew artfully enkindled that innate yearning for social justice which is a typical Aryan characteristic. Once that yearning became alive it was transformed into hatred against those in more fortunate circumstances of life. The next stage was to give a precise philosophical aspect to the struggle for the elimination of social wrongs. And thus the Marxist doctrine was invented.

By presenting this doctrine as part and parcel of a just revindication of social rights, the Jew propagated the doctrine all the more effectively. But at the same time he provoked the opposition of decent people who refused to admit these demands which, because of the form and pseudo-philosophical trimmings in which they arc presented, seemed fundamentally unjust and impossible for realization.
Adolf Hitler (1925-1926). Mein Kampf. Translation by James Murphy (1939). Page 268.
https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.526617/page/n269/mode/2up

----

In his youth Hitler was attracted to the Socialism of the mainstream Social Democratic Party. However, he realized they did not sincerely believe their Socialist principles, and Hitler set out to make a movement that honestly did believe in Socialism.
Quote
Accordingly I had no feeling of antipathy towards the actual policy of the Social Democrats. That its avowed purpose was to raise the level of the working classes--which in my ignorance I then foolishly believed--was a further reason why I should speak in favour of Social Democracy rather than against it. But the features that contributed most to estrange me from the Social Democratic movement was its conservation of Germanism in Austria, its lamentable cocotting with the Slav 'comrades,' who received these approaches favourably as long as any practical advantages were forthcoming but otherwise maintained a haughty reserve, thus giving the importunate mendicants the sort of answer their behaviour deserved.

And so at the age of seventeen the word 'Marxism' was very little known to me, while I looked on 'Social Democracy' and 'Socialism' as synonymous expressions. It was only as the result of a sudden blow from the rough hand of Fate that my eyes were opened to the nature of this unparalleled system for duping the public.
[...]
On my way I noticed the Arbeiterszeitung (The Workman's Journal) in a tobacco shop. This was the chief press-organ of the old Austrian Social Democracy. ... I brought it home with me and spent the whole evening reading it, despite the steadily-mounting rage provoked by this ceaseless outpouring of falsehoods.

I now found that in the social democratic daily papers I could study the inner character of this politico-philosophic system much better than in all their theoretical literature.

For there was a striking discrepancy between the two. In the literary effusions which dealt with the theory of Social Democracy there was a display of high-sounding phraseology about liberty and human dignity and beauty, all promulgated with an air of profound wisdom and prophetic assurance; a meticulously-woven glitter of words, to dazzle and mislead the reader. On the other hand the daily Press inculcated this new doctrine of human redemption in the most brutal fashion. No means were too base, provided they could be exploited in the campaign of slander. These journalists were real virtuosos in the art of twisting facts and presenting them in a deceptive form.
[...]
If Social Democracy should be opposed by a more truthful teaching, then, even though the struggle be of the bitterest kind, this truthful teaching will finally prevail, provided it be enforced with equal ruthlessness.
[...]
I am thankful now for the ordeal which I had to go through at that time; for it was the means of bringing me to think kindly again of my own people, inasmuch as the experience enabled me to distinguish between the false leaders and the victims who have been led astray.

We must took upon the latter simply as victims.
Adolf Hitler (1925-1926). Mein Kampf. Translation by James Murphy (1939). Page 44-50.
https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.526617/page/n45/mode/2up

Hitler then studied further and realized why the Social Democratic Party and Marxist Socialism had become derailed from their ostensible Socialist goals:
Quote
I gradually discovered that the Social Democratic Press was predominantly controlled by Jews. But I did not attach special importance to this circumstance, for the same state of affairs existed also in other newspapers. But there was one striking fact in this connection. It was that there was not a single newspaper with which Jews were connected that could be spoken of as National, in the meaning that my education and convictions attached to that word.

Making an effort to overcome my natural reluctance, I tried to read articles of this nature published in the Marxist Press; but in doing so my aversion increased all the more. And then I set about learning something of the people who wrote and published this mischievous stuff. From the publisher downwards, all of them were Jews. I recalled to mind the names of the public leaders of Marxism, and then I realized that most of them belonged to the Chosen Race — the Social Democratic representatives in the Imperial Cabinet as well as the secretaries of the Trades Unions and the street agitators. Everywhere the same sinister picture presented itself. I shall never forget the row of names — Austerlitz, David, Adler, Ellenbogen, and others. One fact became quite evident to me. It was that this alien race held in its hands the leadership of that Social Democratic Party with whose minor representatives I had been disputing for months past. I was happy at last to know for certain that the Jew is not a German.

Thus I finally discovered the evil spirits leading our people astray. The sojourn in Vienna for one year had proved long enough to convince me that no worker is so rooted in his preconceived notions that he will not surrender them in face of better and clearer arguments and explanations. Gradually I became an expert in the doctrine of the Marxists and used this knowledge as an instrument to drive home my own firm convictions. I was successful in nearly every case. The great masses can be rescued, but a lot of time and a large share of human patience must be devoted to such work.
[...]
Urged by my own daily experiences, I now began to investigate more thoroughly the sources of the Marxist teaching itself. Its effects were well known to me in detail. As a result of careful observation, its daily progress had become obvious to me. And one needed only a little imagination in order to be able to forecast the consequences which must result from it. The only question now was: Did the founders foresee the effects of their work in the form which those effects have shown themselves today, or were the founders themselves the victims of an error? To my mind both alternatives were possible.

If the second question must be answered in the affirmative, then It was the duty of every thinking person to oppose this sinister movement with a view to preventing it from producing its worst results.
[...]
And so I began to gather information about the authors of this teaching, with a view to studying the principles of the movement. The fact that I attained my object sooner than I could have anticipated was due to the deeper insight into the Jewish question which I then gained, my knowledge of this question being hitherto rather superficial. This newly acquired knowledge alone enabled me to make a practical comparison between the real content and the theoretical pretentiousness of the teaching laid down by the apostolic founders of Social Democracy; because I now understood the language of the Jew. I realized that the Jew uses language for the purpose of dissimulating his thought or at least veiling it, so that his real aim cannot be discovered by what he says but rather by reading between the lines. This knowledge was the occasion of the greatest inner revolution that I had yet experienced. From being a soft-hearted cosmopolitan I became an out-and-out anti-Semite.
Adolf Hitler (1925-1926). Mein Kampf. Translation by James Murphy (1939). Page 60-65.
https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.526617/page/n63/mode/2up


Incredible isn't it? Even in a work of propaganda like Mein Kampf, Hitler has no problem admitting his Socialist roots and his desire to manifest a Socialist movement which is able to actually accomplish the social justice goals which Marxist Socialism claims to want, but never will be able to fulfill (both due to flawed ideological foundations and control of its political movements by the very same elites who will have to be toppled to achieve actual Socialist social justice). If Hitler was a far-rightist trying to build a far-rightist movement, why would he so clearly outline his plan to manifest a more honest form of Socialism???


Again, see the previous excerpt about how the Social Democratic Party was indeed very Socialist and not just a mainstream liberal party or something:
https://trueleft.createaforum.com/true-left-vs-false-left/national-socialists-were-socialists/msg10639/#msg10639

And see the quote from Heiden about how he argues Hitler didn't want to join the Social Democratic Party ("Majority Socialist" party) because he thought it was TOO RIGHTIST. Presumably Heiden had read Mein Kampf, so he may have been summarizing Hitler's attitude displayed in the quotes above.
https://trueleft.createaforum.com/true-left-vs-false-left/national-socialists-were-socialists/msg10639/#msg10639


See also the April 12, 1922, speech in Munich, where Hitler explains in further detail about how Communism doesn't actually topple the financial elites.
https://trueleft.createaforum.com/true-left-vs-false-left/national-socialists-were-socialists/msg10614/#msg10614

Blue Kumul

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Re: National Socialists were socialists
« Reply #24 on: January 28, 2022, 07:35:37 am »
"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 always saw it the opposite way. Leftism is everything derived from the Enlightenment, and Romanticism was a movement against the Enlightenment, so Romanticism is not Leftist.

I'd divide Leftism into three waves:

1. Enlightenment and all later forms of liberalism
2. Socialism, including Marxism
3. Post-WW2 countercultural movements

And stop whitewashing Hitler, it is creepy!

guest55

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Re: National Socialists were socialists
« Reply #25 on: January 29, 2022, 01:05:00 am »
Quote
I always saw it the opposite way. Leftism is everything derived from the Enlightenment

Gnosticism was leftist long before any European "enlightenment". Even in the New Testament we witness Jesus's leftism. Our enemies will tell you this is the case also:
Leftism is a Gnostic perversion of Christianity
Quote
Being that we all live in “Christendom” — that is, a culture shaped and animated (in the literal sense of “given life”) by Judeo-Christian principles — I guess it shouldn’t be surprising that we share its underlying assumptions about the “brokenness” of man and the world. But where the progressive goes off the rails is in supposing there is some secret political formula that can reverse the fall and restore us to wholeness. Thus, the ubiquitous frenzied moral passion that always animates the left. Leftists are always exaggeratedly pessimistic about the present state of the world, but “optimistic” in a crazed and manic way that steamrules over anyone who would dare delay the immediate implementation of paradise.
Entire article: https://wolfpangloss.wordpress.com/2008/04/10/leftism-is-a-gnostic-perversion-of-christianity/

This is why the True Left is also known as the Pan-Gnostic Left among True Leftists.

Quote
And stop whitewashing Hitler, it is creepy!

How are we "white-washing" Hitler exactly? You do realize a lot of the previous quotes in this thread are directly from Mein Kampf, as well as other reputable sources, right? Are we "whitewashing" Hitler or have you actually never read anything he said?





90sRetroFan

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Re: National Socialists were socialists
« Reply #26 on: January 29, 2022, 03:19:09 am »
"Leftism is everything derived from the Enlightenment, and Romanticism was a movement against the Enlightenment, so Romanticism is not Leftist."

"Enlightenmenters"  supported Western colonialism because they saw colonialism as a way of spreading the "Enlightenment" to non-Western countries. Romantics were opposed to Western colonialism for the same reason. Thus Romantics are the True Leftists.

You are talking about progressivism, which True Leftism is hostile towards:

https://trueleft.createaforum.com/true-left-vs-false-left/leftists-against-progressivism/

As a simple example, progressives are Islamophobic precisely because they judge Islam to be a regressive force. True Leftists are anti-Islamophobic not because we disagree with the progressive judgement about Islam being a regressive force, but because we agree with it and hence see in Islamization at least a chance to stop progress before it becomes truly unstoppable:

https://trueleft.createaforum.com/true-left-vs-right/if-western-civilization-does-not-die-soon/

https://trueleft.createaforum.com/true-left-vs-false-left/progressive-yahwism/

The nonsensical conflation of leftism with progressivism is the reason why most leftists today are so intellectually weak. Thoroughly extirpating progressivism from leftist thinking is what we are here to do.

"1. Enlightenment and all later forms of liberalism"

This is False Leftism. It still considers Western civilization superior to non-Western civilizations, since the "Enlightenment" was a uniquely Western development.

"2. Socialism, including Marxism"

Marx also supported Western colonialism (see earlier posts), thus Marx was also a False Leftist. It is only Romanticism-inspired versions of socialism, such as Hitlerism, which are True Leftist, considering Western civilization inferior to the civilizations it was colonizing, but merely more powerful.

"3. Post-WW2 countercultural movements"

This is the True Leftist successor to Romanticism-Hitlerism, continuing to argue for the inferiority of Western civilization compared to non-Western civilizations.

The chronological waves of our camp are:

1) Aryan Neolithic revolution
2) Ancient pan-Gnostic movements
3) Romanticism-Hitlerism
4) Counterculture era
5) https://trueleft.createaforum.com/index.php

and of course:

0) Original Nobility

Zea_mays

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Re: National Socialists were socialists
« Reply #27 on: January 30, 2022, 04:29:05 am »
Quote
And stop whitewashing Hitler, it is creepy!

Would you say analogous things to Communists and supporters of "Enlightenment" liberalism/democracy whenever they speak positively of their views? (Personally, I do find their constant rehabilitation of their ideologists and dogmatic devotion to their failed ideologies to be creepy.)

And, if anything, I'm redwashing Hitler by posting direct primary source quotes from him and those who interacted with him personally.  ;D

Consider, for a moment, that professional historians typically write books by quoting a sentence or two from the primary sources and then writing pages upon pages of their own personal opinions to flesh out a narrative. (Sometimes they may go an entire chapter with only citations and no direct quotations, and we have to trust that they are accurately portraying the substance of what they are citing.) In fact, some history books written for general audiences don't cite references at all, and even school history textbooks may not even have any direct quotations.

In contrast, I have provided minimal commentary on the quotes. I have allowed Hitler and those who interacted with him personally to speak almost entirely for themselves, with large chunks of text to give adequate context and fullness to their thoughts. There are quotes from enemies of Hitler (e.g. Rauschning on the right and Strasser on the left), allies (e.g. Wagener and Goebbels), and from Hitler himself. And all the quotes are converging upon the same themes of genuine Socialism.


It is bizarre, I will concede, to read such things for the first time. (I'll admit I was shocked while doing research for this thread!) But it is no more bizarre than, say, a person reading the Communist Manifesto and other works for the first time and realizing what Communism claims to be in its own words is entirely different from how rightist narratives and strawmen portray it.

----


Quote
3) Romanticism-Hitlerism

This was, in fact, an ideological stage acknowledged by philosopher Bertrand Russell in his history of "Western Philosophy". From what I can tell, Russell was left/false left, so he is not merely trying to insult leftism by including Hitler and Mussolini in it.


Russell considered that Hitler could be considered under the umbrella of one of two types of post-Enlightenment "liberalism". This is probably not identical to our divide between the post-Enlightenment False Left and the True Left, but we are not alone in seeing a split.
Quote
Since Rousseau and Kant, there have been two schools of liberalism, which may be distinguished as the hard-headed and the soft-hearted. The hard-headed developed, through Bentham, Ricardo, and Marx, by logical stages into Stalin; the soft-hearted, by other logical stages, through Fichte, Byron, Carlyle, and Nietzsche, into Hitler.
Bertrand Russell. (1946). History of Western Philosophy. George Allen and Unwin LTD. Page 667.
https://archive.org/details/westernphilosoph035502mbp/page/666/mode/2up

Russell also acknowledges Hitler is a Romanticist:
Quote
The intellectual life of the nineteenth century was more complex than that of any previous age. This was due to several causes. ... Fourth: a profound revolt, both philosophical and political, against traditional systems in thought, in politics, and in economics, gave rise to attacks upon many beliefs and institutions that had hitherto been regarded as unassailable. This revolt had two very different forms, one romantic, the other rationalistic. (I am using these words in a liberal sense.) The romantic revolt passes from Byron, Schopenhauer, and Nietzche to Mussolini and Hitler; the rationalistic revolt begins with the French philosophers of the Revolution, passes on, somewhat softened, to the philosophical radicals in England, then acquires a deeper form in Marx and issues in Soviet Russia.
Bertrand Russell. (1946). History of Western Philosophy. George Allen and Unwin LTD. Page 746.
https://archive.org/details/westernphilosoph035502mbp/page/746/mode/2up

(Surely "empiricist" is a better word to describe the non-Romanticists than "rationalistic".)


I don't know much about Rousseau, but Russell sees him as one of the earliest philosophers whose ideas signaled a split between what would become the Romanticist revolution against "Enlightenment" thought. Of course, Hitler himself says his Socialism is entirely pre-Western and traces back to Jesus.
Quote
[Rousseau] is the father of the romantic movement, the initiator of systems of thought which infer non-human facts from human emotions, and the inventor of the political philosophy of pseudo-democratic dictatorships as opposed to traditional absolute monarchies. Ever since his time, those who considered themselves reformers have been divided into two groups, those who followed him and those who followed Locke. Sometimes they co-operated, and many individuals saw no incompatibility. But gradually the incompatibility has become increasingly evident. At the present time, Hitler is an outcome of Rousseau; Roosevelt and Churchill, of Locke.
Bertrand Russell. (1946). History of Western Philosophy. George Allen and Unwin LTD. Page 711.
https://archive.org/details/westernphilosoph035502mbp/page/710/mode/2up


Quote
The chronological waves of our camp are

As an additional random thought regarding political camps, I think there are at least two major techniques to classify them.

The first is in a chronological manner (which would be called a phylogenetic tree if we take into account ideologies branching out into different clusters--e.g. in the classification I outlined earlier in the thread). This is perhaps the most straight-forward technique, since it's basically retracing history.

The second is grouping/distinguishing ideologies by specific characteristics. (e.g. how you outline support vs colonialism vs opposition; or the simple way the True Left and False Left were distinguished on the main site). Ideally these characteristics would cleanly overlap with the groups in a phylogenetic tree--but this is not strictly essential, as even in biology character traits and family classifications don't perfectly correspond to evolutionary phylogenies.

Zea_mays

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Re: National Socialists were socialists
« Reply #28 on: January 30, 2022, 04:35:35 am »
Additional quotes from Wagener that are relevant here.

Again, Hitler passionately advocates for a truly revolutionary and anti-traditional form of Socialism that replaces the past ~1000 years of post-Renaissance Western Civilization with a radically new foundation:
Quote
“What is at stake at the present great turning point? An individualistic worldview is being replaced by a socialistic one! A thousand-year-old attitude toward life is being thrust aside by completely new concepts.

Such a change cannot be decreed by legislation! Nor can it be brought about by a ministry, no matter how homogeneously it is put together and how saturated and filled it is with the new ideas.

Such a transformation requires an inner conversion! A mental, a spiritual, an ethical, even a religious one!
[...]
What is crucial is the internal conversion of the people, of the Volksgenossen, of the Volk! And that is a political task! As yet, almost everyone is imprisoned in the liberalistic attitude. Do you think that a confirmed industrial entrepreneur is prepared suddenly to admit that his property is not a right but a duty? That capital should no longer rule but be ruled? That it is not the life of the individual that matters but the totality? That the principle of the soldier’s sacrificial death should be transformed into the readiness of every working person—whether he be active in the economy or elsewhere—to sacrifice himself for the community?

It is such a far-reaching and complete conversion that the adult is no longer capable of it. Only youth can be converted, newly aligned and adjusted to the socialist sense of obligation toward the community. ...almost two thousand years the Gospel of Christ has been preached, for two thousand years the sense of community has been taught: love one another, care for one another, respect and help one another! But today, at the end of these two thousand years, economic liberalism flourishes as never before!
[...]
And in a couple of years we are supposed to make up for all this and to restore order where millenia have sinned? We’re to believe that we can restore the value of the word of God, the teaching of Christ, the truth of a holy religion, where generations upon generations, nations upon nations, the entire lifespan of a human cultural epoch, all were unable even to recognize the deep abyss in which they wandered or sojourned!

True, this misinterpretation of the Christian faith has become clearly evident only recently, through the mechanization of manual labor and the industrialization of the economy, which allowed the condition of pre-Christian slavery to be revived in new forms.
[...]
But when you see the masses streaming to join the SA, when you observe the enthusiasm of youth, when the cheerful hands of an innocent child reach for you, then you will sense the inner conversion; then you will realize that a new faith is awakening out of the lethargy of a corrupt epoch and taking to the march—the faith in divine justice, in heavenly truth; the faith in an unworldly, paradisiacal future, where the lust for power, force, and enmity gives way to equality and fraternity, the spirit of sacrifice, love and loyalty, and the will to stand before the throne of the Almighty with the open heart of one ready to believe in God. And they will have sufficient greatness to stammer out the prayer for their brothers and fathers, ‘Forgive them. Lord, for they knew not what they did.’

It is on this basis alone that the new world can be built! To lay this groundwork is our task. Our own hopes can aim no further. We must leave some things to be done by those who come after us. Your work will be a signpost for the future, a witness to our great intention, but in our time it will not be crowned with realization.”

He fell silent. His inner enthusiasm had driven the blood into his cheeks. His eyes glowed like bright lights. I thought of Strasser, of our plans. And I felt: Our thinking is so puny.
Otto Wagener. (written in 1946, first published in German in 1978). Hitler: Memoirs of a Confidant. Edited by Henry Ashby Turner, Jr., translated by Ruth Hein (1985). Page 55-57.
https://archive.org/details/wagenerhitlermemoirsofaconfidant/page/n85/mode/2up


Here is Wagener and Hitler having the same conversation about ideal Socialism's approach to business talent and the practical reality of what must happen at the beginning of a 1000-year-Reich in order for the state to be successful:
Quote
It is generally believed that competitors must be totally hostile to each other and constantly at each other’s throats. I hold the reverse to be true. We are accustomed to believe that struggle is necessary for that which is healthier and stronger—in this case, better—to prevail. That is said to be the case in the animal kingdom and the vegetable kingdom. And it cannot be otherwise, the belief holds, among men and in men’s work.

I often talked with Hitler about this question. He was radically committed to that view. Even applied to economics, he saw in the struggle for assertion of self and for preeminence the surest guarantee for progress and the general weal.

Clearly he had conflicting feelings. He was a socialist and determined to remain one. But his inner attachment to nature led him time and again to observe and acknowledge as a law of nature the struggle for existence, the struggle to defeat the other.

“But that is liberalism, pure and simple,” I told him on the occasion of one such discussion. “Man has been thinking and acting this way for two thousand years. With this watchword he overcame absolutism and created the system that today we call democracy, which put an end to the struggle of the individual for economic and spiritual freedom. But it is exactly this economic freedom that created new autocracies, in the factories and the large concerns, where the workers and clerical personnel were turned even more directly into slaves than they ever had been under the scepter of a feudal lord.”

“I know myself,” he answered, “that here is an intersecting point in the lines of my natural feelings and my logical and historical perception. In our program, we have even given expression to this hurdle by coining the maxim, ‘public need before private greed.’ Individual striving—yes, individual acquisitiveness—is the driving force that animates the world and the economy and that has engendered all major inventions and discoveries. If we eliminate it, the drive slackens and progress stagnates. But to stand still is to regress.

That is why we must preserve this driving force, we must nurture it, even reward it! We must take this striving, which is in itself selfish, and place it in the service of all, in the service of the whole nation — yes, perhaps in time in the service of all mankind.”

“If you believe [Wagener replied] that mankind can be trained to this end without very far-reaching interventions by the state, then, I believe, you have too high an opinion of mankind. Man’s aspirations are evil—we should say, selfish—from childhood; the Bible tells us something of the sort. Perhaps Christ was one of the first to contrast man’s liberalistic attitude with the socialist stance. But his teachings, which can still be found in pure and noble form in St. Paul and others, soon became falsified, even turned upside down, and little of Christianity remains in the churches that use its name today.”

“I know that, Wagener. I’m quite clear on that point. But perhaps it is easier to preach and find prophets for a socialism that corresponds to Marxist ideas or present-day communism than for the synthesis of reason that has the goal of putting the given traits of humanity in the service of the people. For if we permitted our Gauleiter and speakers to preach pure socialism of the customary order, we would be doing nothing different from the Bolsheviks. In that case, we would not have to do battle with them. But what we want is precisely to keep this destructive Bolshevism, which annihilates culture and economy, from taking further root, so that it destroys our life as well!

Communism results in a welfare state where the standards are averaged downward. We want a state that allows for free development of the personality, but in the last analysis, this must also be for the needs of the people — that is, in the service of the community, where the standard is to be raised as high as possible, and then higher yet.

This state, however, can come into being only in the fight for existence, in a competitive struggle that is as free as possible, connected purely and simply to the promotion of the commonweal—that is, gain for all: for the Volk community, for humanity.

You see, that’s what doesn’t quite make sense to me in your plans for economic organization, for a system of economic self-administration. It is too likely that these economic councils, this multiplicity of opinion, this chaos of interests, might inhibit, or even stifle, the development of individuality and personal initiative. This structure is necessary for the present, as long as the economy is in a slump, as long as millions of people cannot find work, as long as systematic state control of the economy must occur just to bring it back to full production. But the closer we come to normal times, the more the shackles and restraints that hinder the free play of the natural struggle must be loosened. The state must be, not a nursemaid, but the incarnation of the ethical conscience of a people and of each individual.”
Otto Wagener. (written in 1946, first published in German in 1978). Hitler: Memoirs of a Confidant. Edited by Henry Ashby Turner, Jr., translated by Ruth Hein (1985). Page 114-116.
https://archive.org/details/wagenerhitlermemoirsofaconfidant/page/n143/mode/2up

I think with state control over reproduction and central direction of the economy, a balance could be found to prevent hyper-competitiveness from going unchecked, while not stifling the productivity that will unfortunately be necessary for the battles to come.

Zea_mays

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Re: National Socialists were socialists
« Reply #29 on: January 30, 2022, 04:55:40 am »
Summary and commentary:
In this chapter, Hitler and Wagener discuss the foreign policy goal of a Socialist federation of nations, with the hope that National Socialist Germany will serve as a shining example that could convince even democratic nations to eventually adopt Socialism.

Hitler also criticizes Oswald Spengler (he says he will strive against the "decline" predicted by Spengler, but Hitler advocates for regressing towards an ancient pre-Renaissance ideal of Socialism, whereas Spengler's "West" seems clearly post-Renaissance. Further, from reading a brief summary of Spengler's work, it seems like his view of history is "progressive" in the development of cultures, but Hitler is clearly "regressive" and also says he wants to dismantle the post-Renaissance order and radically replace it. In other words, Hitler is anti-Spengler, but from a leftist perspective, not a rightist Western-preservationist perspective.)

Hitler also mentions that industrialization is present almost exclusively in nations with "Nordic" elements. However, Hitler strongly criticizes industrialization and the slavery it entails. So, Hitler's desire to harness the "Nordic" character is a practical matter to redirect their talent away from their "natural" selfish-individualism and inventiveness towards strengthening the power of a National Socialist state.

This "Nordic" character is in contrast to the "Slavic" character, who have allowed themselves to become slaves to Judeo-Bolshevism. However, all the worst aspects of Communism were not developed by Russians or Slavs themselves, but by Jews, and then accepted by the Slavic peoples where Communism has prevailed.

Hitler also predicts an interesting three-front future Cold War between a future National Socialist EU, the US, and Communist nations. Hitler (correctly) predicts the heavily-industrialized US will eventually take over the UK's throne as a global military power, and Hitler thinks he needs an alliance with England and other future-EU nations to have the power for National Socialism to be triumphant over the internationalist-industrialist US bloc and the internationalist (false) Socialist USSR bloc.
Quote
In the next section Wagener summarizes six postulates on foreign policy at which he had arrived by the early 1930s: [...] (2) collaboration with Italy would be a mistake, since it would nourish the belief in the Soviet Union that the Nazis were mere fascists, [...] (3) in order to make possible an ideological rapprochement with the Soviet Union, Nazi plans for a "social economy" should be emphasized; [...] (5) by means of economic agreements and collaboration, Germany's neighbors in Central Europe should be won over to a federation that could serve as a bridge between East and West by means of which socialist conciliation could take place.
[...]
When he had finished, Wagener recounts, Hitler calmly responded as follows.

“I did not take the road of politics to smooth the way for international socialism, much less to preach a new, socialist religion. I am not made to be the founder of a religion, I am not one and have no desire to be one. Rather, I am a politician. I bring to the German Volk national socialism, the political doctrine of the Volk community, the solidarity of all who are part of the German Volk and who are ready and willing to feel themselves an inextricable but co-responsible particle of the totality of the Volk, having responsibility for it.

A Volk in the current political sense has ceased to be a racial unit, a racially pure community. The great migrations of world history, the military expeditions, the times of enemy occupation, and also, of course, the admixture that became ever more frequent as the result of international trade relations, have seen to it that all sorts of races and racial mixtures live side by side within the borders of any state.

Nevertheless, most nations—the United States of America forming the most notable exception—are the structures within certain areas where either the old tribal system has survived or a community has come into being over time that was consolidated into a Volk, possessing its own style, its own language, its own attitudes on ethics and morality, and its own culture. Such groups of people who feel that they belong together continue to unite under economic, political, and even purely geographic influences, and these groups rightly designate themselves a Volk. In this same way, America will in time turn into one Volk.
[...]
Our movement has adopted the mission of enabling the German Volk to change the Weimar constitution, so that it will correspond to the essence and will of the Volk. And this essence of the German Volk is socialist in the most profound sense. Any Volk community is, in the last analysis, always socialist.

Earlier, you mentioned the situation of the Jews in Soviet Russia. You call the Jew’s participation in the Bolshevik Revolution ‘midwifery’. Let us make no mistake! Thanks to the Jews, socialist movements all over the world have turned into mechanisms of battle against the organic development of the peoples! Their influence on nations is not constructive but destructive. They love the socialist idea, not for the sake of the idea, but for the possibility of using the concept to win over the disconnected masses to the struggle against the indigenous Volk leadership. Since, on the basis of the Biblical promise made to him, the Jew strives for power within all peoples, the indigenous leadership in every nation is his enemy! But when it has successfully been removed by a revolution, then the Jews do not actually introduce genuine socialism as they have promised—because it would wrest power from their hands again. Rather, they established the rule of the proletariat—or, as happened in Weimar, the rule of the revolutionaries—and they themselves take over the safeguarding of the attainments of the revolution and the representation of the proletariat.

The Jew is not a socialist! Once before he nailed to the cross the great Creator of the concept of socialist redemption! He will do so again whenever he can! For he is an individualist, an economic liberalist, an egotist—yes, he is a parasitic creature. In Russia, the Jews succeeded in directing the will to freedom of oppressed Slavic peoples against allegedly alien rulers. But then, themselves alien, they set themselves in the former rulers’ place. They still occupy it, and I have no reason to believe that the Slavs are making any attempts to oust them again. But as long as that is not the case, a National-Socialist Germany cannot enter into alliances with Russia. Rather, I see Jewry’s determination to use Russia as a springboard from which to direct the removal of the existing order in other nations as well! For the organization of the Comintern is purely Jewish!

That is why it becomes necessary to strengthen the peoples of Europe and all the world against this germ of destruction ...
[...]
... I have no doubt that gradually, but with absolute certainty, a socialist reorganization will take place in all democratic countries. Except in Russia! There the herd will be increasingly governed with the whip.
[...]
The international element of the communist movement that emanates from Russia is not really Russian, or Slavic; it is Jewish. And we must not make the mistake of believing that it is supported by a Russian-Slavic idea, which might even have some creative content. The current activities of the Comintern members are purely destructive.

There also exists a constructive international socialist idea. But it is altogether different. For, look here, once nations have begun to carry out a socialist and socio-economic reorganization within their own borders, the time is ripe for the totality of nations—that is, all the peoples and states—to give up fighting each other for power and supremacy, enslavement and exploitation, according to liberal principles—that is, acting according to imperialist principles. Then, even among them the time has come for giving consideration to pride of place, communal spirit, even ‘socialism.’ What first occurred on a small scale within the individual nations will then take place among the worldwide community of nations. Even the smallest of them will enjoy equal rights, even the have-nots will be able to share in the goods and the surplus of the elite’s international property. That is socialism of the nations! But it is quite different from the international socialism of a Marx or a Lenin!
[...]
But first, there will have to be national socialism. Otherwise the peoples and their governments are not ready for the socialism of nations. It is not possible to be liberal in one’s own country and demand socialism among nations. Education about and firm belief in national socialism must precede that change. But if we do not succeed in taking this road, we will either be given a world empire headed by a single state—the strongest, the most powerful, which will, in the end, have to resort to military methods to secure and maintain its power—or end up with international Bolshevism, which can equally be nothing but despotism. The first goal is obviously being striven for at present by North America, while Russia aims at the latter. Perhaps neither of them yet realizes what is happening. But, as I said: If we do not succeed in paving the way for the socialism of nations, then one or another of these two must set in!
[...]
The international powers that are at work to penetrate the unanimity of the national bodies, the states, the nations, to dissolve and undermine them, are therefore contrary to nature and hostile to the divine order. ... Such organizations can, at times, be stronger than the states! And herein lies their danger! Not only for the individual state, but especially for the possibility of creating the great socialist community of nations.

So, if we pursue the goal of such a community of nations—and it must, as I said, be pursued, and it will be the final goal of human politics on this earth—then we must first reconstruct the independence and autonomy of the nations, even the smallest, and drive the large international organizations back to their purely technical sphere of operations, eliminating every last possibility of their influence on governments and governmental organizations. This is a further basic perception.
[...]
I cannot believe that the civilized nations of the world are so blind that they will lacerate each other to smooth the way for Bolshevism. The contrary is essential: coalition, by groups, into confederacies of states, into families of nations, perhaps even here and there into federal states.
[...]
It is all the more important that we work at a coalition. And on that point I will tell you over and over again: without England it is not possible! England has the necessary power. We bring along only the idea and the will. I cannot imagine that England will not decide to climb down from its pedestal of arrogance and imperialism, which has been made outmoded by history, and to extend its hand to a community of nations. ...”
[...]
Hitler raised his voice for the final words. It was a last, and without a doubt a final, rejection of the policies I had proposed. But this rejection was at once so impressive and so convincing that, after long internal struggle, I decided to bow to it. Only two goals remained absolute for me: to smooth the way to the East, using economic negotiations and treaties that would avoid and make unnecessary armed confrontation; and the realization at the earliest possible moment of a socio-economic reorganization that might prompt even Russia to imitation and abandonment of its Bolshevik ideology.
Otto Wagener. (written in 1946, first published in German in 1978). Hitler: Memoirs of a Confidant. Edited by Henry Ashby Turner, Jr., translated by Ruth Hein (1985). Page 165-174.
https://archive.org/details/wagenerhitlermemoirsofaconfidant/page/n207/mode/2up

Note that last sentence. Rauschning (a rightist anti-Hitlerist) said Hitler expressed the same sentiment that Bolshevism will be forced to imitate and transform into a sort of National Socialism!!! Once again, this would make no sense if National Socialism was not a genuinely leftist Socialist ideology. I would recommend reading the passages from Rauschning again, as these are the strongest quotes I have seen about Hitler unambiguously stressing the leftism of his Socialism:
https://trueleft.createaforum.com/true-left-vs-false-left/national-socialists-were-socialists/msg10718/#msg10718