Post by: Aaryq on January 20, 2008, 06:59:18 PM
A lot of times, we will talk about the left trying to disarm the populace. How does gun control fit into actual Socialism and Communism (not the totalitarian Stalinism and whatnot)?
Are there any Communist or Socialist political parties that believes strongly in the Second Amendment?
Post by: De Selby on January 20, 2008, 08:13:12 PM
Howdy folks. I'm a new face here and a regular face on THR. My question for you (I hope this belongs here and not on THR) is about politics and guns.
A lot of times, we will talk about the left trying to disarm the populace. How does gun control fit into actual Socialism and Communism (not the totalitarian Stalinism and whatnot)?
Are there any Communist or Socialist political parties that believes strongly in the Second Amendment?
A lot of times, we will talk about the left trying to disarm the populace. How does gun control fit into actual Socialism and Communism (not the totalitarian Stalinism and whatnot)?
Are there any Communist or Socialist political parties that believes strongly in the Second Amendment?
George Orwell seemed to be a strong believer in personal firearms. For sure he enjoyed shooting and firearms himself. That's apparent in his writing.
So one major communist who believed in it...have no idea about the parties. I forgot that communist parties still existed.
Post by: SomeKid on January 20, 2008, 08:19:58 PM
I think Orwell was very anti-Communist. Or perhaps you haven't read his books? They are quite AGAINST police states.
As a rule, communism/socialism/nazism (they are all cut from the same cloth) are against personal liberty.
Post by: jefnvk on January 20, 2008, 08:22:53 PM
I have no idea what kind of restrictions or whatever they had on personal ownership, though.
Post by: wooderson on January 20, 2008, 08:22:58 PM
Union activists throughout American history have armed themselves - got to have something for protection when the cops and the thugs are gunning for you. Less common today (though not unheard of) but still fairly prevalent when folks in less-developed parts of the world wish to unionize.
Orwell, not exactly a 'communist' (in either the Soviet sense or how people otherwise identify as communists) - his foreword to Animal Farm was a defense of 'democratic socialism' and he fit in largely with the 'libertarian socialist' element of British politics and the Spanish Civil War.
By and large, my experience with fellow travelers has been that they're less apt to believe in gun control than liberals. It's for a variety of reasons - guns are a useful tool in defending oneself against non-governmental threats (think Freedom Riders), distrust of the police and authorities in general (if they're armed, I want to be), pragmatic (if you're a pinko, you likely believe that crime has a multitude of root causes that aren't connected to access to guns), etc..
Post by: wooderson on January 20, 2008, 08:24:29 PM
Quote
I think Orwell was very anti-Communist.
Orwell was anti-Stalinist (or anti-Soviet). He was a lifelong and committed socialist. Quote
Or perhaps you haven't read his books? They are quite AGAINST police states.
As are the vast majority of socialists.Quote
As a rule, communism/socialism/nazism (they are all cut from the same cloth)
Not worth dignifying.Quote
are against personal liberty.
They'd disagree.
Post by: De Selby on January 20, 2008, 08:24:57 PM
SS,
I think Orwell was very anti-Communist. Or perhaps you haven't read his books? They are quite AGAINST police states.
As a rule, communism/socialism/nazism (they are all cut from the same cloth) are against personal liberty.
I think Orwell was very anti-Communist. Or perhaps you haven't read his books? They are quite AGAINST police states.
As a rule, communism/socialism/nazism (they are all cut from the same cloth) are against personal liberty.
No, I've definitely read his books-George Orwell was as red as they come. In fact I think it would be hard to read any of his books short of one (Animal Farm) and come to the conclusion that he's not a communist, since he says so explicitly in virtually every text. His main problem with Stalin was that he didn't consider Stalin to be a true communist-you see stalin didn't hand out property to worker's councils and take away all privileges and excess wealth from elites.
Orwell didn't consider communism to be a police state system-he thought, as many do on this board, that if you just let people vote, they would vote themselves a fairly equal share of everyone else's property. He was probably right-if you have complete democracy, and people get to read media of the sort that Orwell produced, they most likely will just vote themselves as much of the property of their rich neighbors as possible.
Edit: I'll go ahead and post a typical essay of Orwell's that I found available in full text online:
http://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/lion/english/e_saw
Quote
What this war has demonstrated is that private capitalism that is, an economic system in which land, factories, mines and transport are owned privately and operated solely for profit does not work. It cannot deliver the goods. This fact had been known to millions of people for years past, but nothing ever came of it, because there was no real urge from below to alter the system, and those at the top had trained themselves to be impenetrably stupid on just this point. Argument and propaganda got one nowhere. The lords of property simply sat on their bottoms and proclaimed that all was for the best. Hitler's conquest of Europe, however, was a physical debunking of capitalism.
continued:
Quote
An army of unemployed led by millionaires quoting the Sermon on the Mount that is our danger. But it cannot arise when we have once introduced a reasonable degree of social justice. The lady in the Rolls-Royce car is more damaging to morale than a fleet of Goering's bombing planes.
Post by: SomeKid on January 20, 2008, 08:44:13 PM
wood, you may think that, but from my POV they are the same. Unless you can debunk that, why not hold your tongue?
Communist Russia (CR) - Never baned guns outright, but when Stalin came to power, he started restricting them, and the restrictions kept getting added. Legal gun ownership I would daresay was all but unheard of.
Nazi Germany (NG) - Banned private ownership. If you want to use guns, join the SS.
Modern Day Socialist Britain (SB) - All guns are banned. Replicas get registered.
All three are the same here. Lets move on.
CR - Starved tens of millions.
NG - Holocaust.
SB - Not overtly killing people off, but it does let innocent people die at the hands of criminals, and does nothing to save them. Far as I am concerned, this is murder by disarming and neglecting.
Two are identical, one is close.
CR - Government owns everything.
NG - Government owned, or simply took.
SB - Officially you still have private property.
Two are virtually identical, one is catching up.
CR - Privacy. Funny.
NG - Privacy? Who needs that.
SB - Cameras cameras everywhere...
Looks to me like the three methods are all cut from whole cloth. Communism is a political ideology, and has socialism as an economic system. You cannot have communism without socialism. This alone proves they are similar systems. You can have the socialism minus the true communism, but it won;t be much different, as demonstrated above.
Post by: Perd Hapley on January 20, 2008, 09:22:56 PM
I got the real impression he was very much against governments having power.
So, he was an anarchist?
Post by: Aaryq on January 20, 2008, 10:22:08 PM
While I'm on the subject, anyone know what Karl Marx has to say about it?
Post by: CAnnoneer on January 21, 2008, 05:41:31 AM
Since a powerful oppressive thieving state is a necessary condition, it leads to gun control quite naturally, to diminish the power of individuals and organizations to resist. As a result, in soviet countries there was essentially no legal gun ownership except for an extremely limited number of party functionaries and a very small community of trusted hunters, whose shotguns were under lock and key for most of the year and whose ammunition was strictly monitored.
Bottom line: gun freedoms and socialist/communist states are inherently incompatible.
Post by: Paddy on January 21, 2008, 05:43:36 AM
Post by: CAnnoneer on January 21, 2008, 05:49:29 AM
The threat of individual disarmament is not from either Communism or Socialism. Both have been tried and failed. The threat is from the fascism of the corporatist state, the old 'military industrial complex' Eisenhower warned us about.
Historically, fascism failed as well, in Germany, Italy, Spain, Japan. By your logic, we should not fear it either.
Corporatism is something that you often refer to but never define. So, we still don't know what you mean by it.
Guns and gun-related products as well as the associated business such as tourism and hunting are billion-dollar industries. At first glance, it makes no sense for corporations to want to lose all that business.
Post by: wooderson on January 21, 2008, 06:57:27 AM
Quote
I could very well be wrong, and maybe he was red. So be it. However, when I read 1984/Animal Farm, I got the real impression he was very much against governments having power. Hence, I concluded he would not be a communist.
This is precisely what makes him a 'libertarian socialist' or 'democratic socialist' - or why he could conceivably be a little-c communist (from 'commune'), though I don't recall Orwell describing himself as such.Quote
wood, you may think that, but from my POV they are the same. Unless you can debunk that, why not hold your tongue?
From my POV black is white and and up is down - why don't you debunk that, huh?Your POV is ignorant, sorry. We see this in your reference to big ol' Socialist Britain - which has a mixed-market economy (with all attendant problems - their debt/housing problem is going to be a nightmare) and wealth division not at all unlike ours.
Quote
Communism is a political ideology, and has socialism as an economic system. You cannot have communism without socialism. This alone proves they are similar systems.
These logical proofs are not your strong suit.
Post by: Iain on January 21, 2008, 08:48:55 AM
Your POV is ignorant, sorry. We see this in your reference to big ol' Socialist Britain - which has a mixed-market economy (with all attendant problems - their debt/housing problem is going to be a nightmare) and wealth division not at all unlike ours.
I was going to say something else, but yeah that'll do. It's more polite too. I'd appreciate you saying something about the sheer insanity of comparing modern Britain to Nazi Germany and the USSR. Especially including a 'genocide' category in that comparision. Mind boggles, really.
Post by: K Frame on January 21, 2008, 09:23:34 AM
Post by: Scout26 on January 21, 2008, 10:33:57 AM
NAZI, IIRC, that was the acronym for National SOCIALIST German Workers Party. It wasn't a "right-wing" party as is popularly proclaimed, but was in fact a scoialist regime, complete with wealth re-distribution (mostly from conquered people/territories) that keep the German people placated and Hitler in power. Since any socialism is legalized theft, what Hitler constantly needed were new 'victims' in which to rob, whether that was Poland, Norway, France, the Balkans, Russia or Jews. Hitler was driven by the desire to keep his Volk economically happy to avoid a replay of the "stab in the back" caused by the rampant hunger, starvation and economic chaos during the the First World War.
http://www.reason.com/news/show/120941.html
The Nazi's were not right-wing, but socialists in the truest sense of the word.
[END Rant]
Post by: wooderson on January 21, 2008, 10:52:09 AM
Nor was the party 'capitalist' or 'conservative' in the sense that Americans can understand or identify (except for Buchananites - rimshot please) - for Hitler, like Stalin and totalitarians throughout man's history, all ideology was trumped by a cult of personality and greed for state power. But Hitler and the party did have the whole-hearted backing of Germany's industrialists and capitalist ruling class. Why? Because he was good for them - repudiating Weimar and rapid industrialization fed their pockets, he shut down the actual socialist parties (KPD and SPD), demolished a democratic/left-leaning Republic that they never supported, broke up independent labor unions (replacing them with state-run groups that never attempted to bargain on behalf of labor) and later provided them with cheap (coughcough) labor.
The simple fact is that Hitler's greatest enemies were the leftists in Germany and elsewhere - and a primary reason he was left alone by the US/Britain/France during his rise to power was that he represented a non-Bolshevik (and ostensibly capitalist-friendly) power center in Europe. The capitalist powers were far more fearful of Bolshevik or anarchist revolutions in their backyard than they were of fascist states (as evidenced by their willingness to work with Spain and Portugal for the next thirty years).
Post by: ilbob on January 21, 2008, 12:43:20 PM
The simple fact is that Hitler's greatest enemies were the leftists in Germany and elsewhere - and a primary reason he was left alone by the US/Britain/France during his rise to power was that he represented a non-Bolshevik (and ostensibly capitalist-friendly) power center in Europe. The capitalist powers were far more fearful of Bolshevik or anarchist revolutions in their backyard than they were of fascist states (as evidenced by their willingness to work with Spain and Portugal for the next thirty years).
Interestingly enough, they turned out to be right.
Post by: wooderson on January 21, 2008, 12:50:28 PM
Post by: Iain on January 21, 2008, 01:10:48 PM
Post by: thebaldguy on January 21, 2008, 01:16:44 PM
Repressive leaders/governments can certainly prevent firearm ownership from happening anywhere with any style of government. Repression and control of citizens by force occurs when only governments have guns.
Post by: wooderson on January 21, 2008, 03:20:49 PM
For better or worse, the pansy liberals who want to take away your guns aren't doing it because they hate you, or because they don't want anyone to be able to challenge the state. Their is a genuine belief on their part that if you restricted (or removed entirely) private gun ownership, it would save lives. This is a misguided (and incorrect) belief - but it isn't one that should be met with anger.
Whereas an authoritarian regime is interested in disarming individuals because they pose a threat. For the Nazis, the plan was promoting individual gun ownership among Aryan supporters and denying ownership to Jews. For the Chinese, in any form (Maoist or the current horrorshow), it was about anyone being able to pose a threat to the hegemony of the state.
Post by: roo_ster on January 21, 2008, 05:06:13 PM
Orwell was a socialist, no doubt in my bourgeoisie bones. He was different with regard to most his contemporaries in that he was willing to call out thuggery when he saw it in socialist & similar groups.
Quote
As a rule, communism/socialism/nazism (they are all cut from the same cloth)
Not worth dignifying.It is quite worth dignifying, as it is fact.
Heck, I'll go on more and say that American progressive movement grew its roots in fascist soil:
A photo of Phil La Follette's well intentioned National Progressive Party launch in 1938...It doesn't show the giant banners that were arranged behind him, but you can tell by the Nazi Party meets Jefferson Davis official Progressive Party logo hanging from the podium that it wasn't a good idea....and yes,copying the iconic success of German Nazi design was their naive intention.
Mussolini (the guy that popularized the term fascist) was a socialist of the international sort, until he figured that nationalistic socialism was the surer route to power:
Quote from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mussolini
Mussolini found a job in February 1909 in the city of Trento, which was ethnically Italian but then under the control of Austria-Hungary. He did office work for the local socialist party and edited its newspaper L'Avvenire del Lavoratore ("The Future of the Worker"). It did not take him long to make contact with irredentist politician and journalist Cesare Battisti, and to agree to write for and edit his newspaper Il Popolo ("The People") in addition to the work he did for the party.
I could go on, but it is getting late.
Post by: wooderson on January 21, 2008, 07:11:01 PM
Quote
He was different with regard to most his contemporaries in that he was willing to call out thuggery when he saw it in socialist & similar groups.
What makes him 'different' in that regard? The oldest continuous strain of American socialism (Eugene Debs' democratic socialism) broke with the Soviets in 1919. Much of the conflict of the Spanish Civil War was between Soviet leadership and leftists who weren't willing to ride on Moscow's train. At no point between the wars or after was there a general acquiescence on the part of socialists to Bolshevism or Stalinism.Quote
Heck, I'll go on more and say that American progressive movement grew its roots in fascist soil:
Which would be great (if laughable), were the 'American progressive movement' a socialist group.(Say, wasn't Bob LaFollette a Republican?)
As for the 'circumcised swastika' - have you a shred of evidence that the desire had anything to do with Nazi Germany? Of course not. But you'll slur with the scantest of evidence, I guess.
Quote
Mussolini (the guy that popularized the term fascist) was a socialist of the international sort, until he figured that nationalistic socialism was the surer route to power:
And Ronald Reagan was once a New Deal Democrat, and countless Republicans segregationist Democrats. This is why we don't analyze based on what someone once claimed to be, but rather how they governed - their mature political ideology.Post by: wooderson on January 21, 2008, 07:24:29 PM
Good to know.
Post by: De Selby on January 21, 2008, 07:50:18 PM
I see, amusedly, that this 'Progressives Were Fascists, No Really' stuff pretty much has its genesis in that Jonah Goldberg book where everyone to the left of Ronald Reagan was a Stalinist, or a Nazi, or both, and that all good in mankind's history was thanks to hard-working conservatives.
Good to know.
Good to know.
Jonah Goldberg-one of the dumbest people in journalism. Not surprised.
Post by: Scout26 on January 22, 2008, 01:35:57 AM
How about any of the writings of Hitler and his minions ??Quote
Far from being victims of Nazism, Aly argues, the majority of Germans were indirect war profiteers. Requisitioned Jewish property, resources stolen from the conquered, and punitive taxes levied on local businesses insulated citizens from shortages and allowed the regime to create a racist-totalitarian welfare state. The German home front, Aly claims, suffered less privation than its English and American counterparts. To understand Hitlers popularity, Aly proposes, it is necessary to focus on the socialist aspect of National Socialism.
While underemphasized by modern historians, this socialism was stressed in many contemporaneous accounts of fascism, especially by libertarian thinkers. F.A. Hayek famously dedicated The Road to Serfdom to the socialists of all parties that is, Labourites, Bolsheviks, and National Socialists. It was the union of the anti-capitalist forces of the right and the left, the fusion of radical and conservative socialism, Hayek wrote, which drove out from Germany everything that was liberal. Ludwig von Mises agreed, arguing in 1944 that both Russia and Germany are right in calling their systems socialist.
The Nazis themselves regarded the left-right convergence as integral to understanding fascism. Adolf Eichmann viewed National Socialism and communism as quasi-siblings, explaining in his memoirs that he inclined towards the left and emphasized socialist aspects every bit as much as nationalist ones. As late as 1944, Propaganda Minister Josef Goebbels publicly celebrated our socialism, reminding his war-weary subjects that Germany alone [has] the best social welfare measures. Contrast this, he advised, with the Jews, who were the very incarnation of capitalism.
Using a farrago of previously unpublished statistics, Aly describes in detail a social system larded with benefits open only to Aryan comrades, naturally. To achieve a truly socialist division of personal assets, he writes, Hitler implemented a variety of interventionist economic policies, including price and rent controls, exorbitant corporate taxes, frequent polemics against landlords, subsidies to German farmers as protection against the vagaries of weather and the world market, and harsh taxes on capital gains, which Hitler himself had denounced as effortless income.
Aly demonstrates convincingly that Nazi domestic policies were remarkably friendly toward the German lower classes, soaking the wealthy and redistributing the burdens of wartime. And with fresh memories of Weimer inflation, transferring the tax burden to corporations earned the leadership in Berlin considerable political capital, as the government keenly registered.
For instance, at the outset of war Nazi economists established a wartime tax of 50 percent on all wages that applied only to the wealthiest Germans. In the end, Aly writes, only 4 percent of the population paid the full 50 percent surcharge. In occupied Holland, administrators dramatically raised taxes to fund an anti-Bolshevik campaign, while some Dutch companies paid upward of 112 percent of profits in tax.
While underemphasized by modern historians, this socialism was stressed in many contemporaneous accounts of fascism, especially by libertarian thinkers. F.A. Hayek famously dedicated The Road to Serfdom to the socialists of all parties that is, Labourites, Bolsheviks, and National Socialists. It was the union of the anti-capitalist forces of the right and the left, the fusion of radical and conservative socialism, Hayek wrote, which drove out from Germany everything that was liberal. Ludwig von Mises agreed, arguing in 1944 that both Russia and Germany are right in calling their systems socialist.
The Nazis themselves regarded the left-right convergence as integral to understanding fascism. Adolf Eichmann viewed National Socialism and communism as quasi-siblings, explaining in his memoirs that he inclined towards the left and emphasized socialist aspects every bit as much as nationalist ones. As late as 1944, Propaganda Minister Josef Goebbels publicly celebrated our socialism, reminding his war-weary subjects that Germany alone [has] the best social welfare measures. Contrast this, he advised, with the Jews, who were the very incarnation of capitalism.
Using a farrago of previously unpublished statistics, Aly describes in detail a social system larded with benefits open only to Aryan comrades, naturally. To achieve a truly socialist division of personal assets, he writes, Hitler implemented a variety of interventionist economic policies, including price and rent controls, exorbitant corporate taxes, frequent polemics against landlords, subsidies to German farmers as protection against the vagaries of weather and the world market, and harsh taxes on capital gains, which Hitler himself had denounced as effortless income.
Aly demonstrates convincingly that Nazi domestic policies were remarkably friendly toward the German lower classes, soaking the wealthy and redistributing the burdens of wartime. And with fresh memories of Weimer inflation, transferring the tax burden to corporations earned the leadership in Berlin considerable political capital, as the government keenly registered.
For instance, at the outset of war Nazi economists established a wartime tax of 50 percent on all wages that applied only to the wealthiest Germans. In the end, Aly writes, only 4 percent of the population paid the full 50 percent surcharge. In occupied Holland, administrators dramatically raised taxes to fund an anti-Bolshevik campaign, while some Dutch companies paid upward of 112 percent of profits in tax.
Post by: Iain on January 22, 2008, 02:40:37 AM
Of course they seem to rate almost everyone as being a bit authoritarian
Bigger than I thought.
Now, the purpose of my previous comment is that there is a tendency in some to deny that a libertarian/lefty or a authoritarian/righty can exist. Others deny that a libertarian/righty or an authoritarian/lefty can exist (I don't mean those whole squares in the diagram above, more the areas towards each corner).
It's all just elaborate Godwinning - you lot are the Nazis. In reality a left/right political centrist like me is the one that should be most careful of the slide to authoritarianism - it's those beasts that can justify the most, appeal to the many.
Post by: wooderson on January 22, 2008, 06:20:39 AM
All your excerpt argues is that "Hitler was a socialist, cuz he wasn't our particular brand of capitalist." No mention of widespread support among the industrial class, breaking labor unions, depriving workers of what power they might have held. No mention of the privatization of resources and industries the Weimar Republic had nationalized. Certainly no mention of Hitler's belief that Bolshevism was a Jewish plot. Not a moment spent on trying to argue the Marxist roots of any of those policies (a 'welfare state' is not 'socialism' - it is a 'welfare state').
All we see is a desire to separate one's ideology from 'pure evil' - and if at all possible, assign it to the other side.
It is more useful to simply regard Nazism and Stalinism (etc.) as outside the political spectrum. Quit trying to use either one to attack one's opponents unless there is a clear and undeniable connection between the two.
Post by: CAnnoneer on January 22, 2008, 11:06:18 AM
Quit trying to use either one to attack one's opponents unless there is a clear and undeniable connection between the two.
Ironically, you are doing the same thing you criticize others for. Because you like socialism, you are trying to redefine what nazism and stalinism were, so people cannot attack your stance by association. Just like in the abortion issue, you are essentially playing Clintonian semantics games here as well. You have to understand that while there were differences between the two (e.g. nazism allowing pseudocapitalist economy), they were both versions of socialism.
Post by: Paddy on January 22, 2008, 12:03:21 PM
He further explained what fascism is when he said things like "The corporate State considers that private enterprise in the sphere of production is the most effective and useful instrument in the interest of the nation. In view of the fact that private organization of production is a function of national concern, the organizer of the enterprise is responsible to the State for the direction given to production." He means a ruling state corporate structure, like what's happening here in the U.S. IOW, we're rapidly moving to a corporatist state, where a small group of wealthy elites run government, which has ceased to be representative. We no longer live in a democracy.
But I realized that any in depth, open minded examination of fascism v socialism is beyond the abilities of most Rush/Hannity/Bush apologists who see everything in a simple left/right framework. Thus they're totally unable to grasp the concept of corporate run state tyranny.
So I'll just pass. I don't have the time and besides I just had a really nice myofascial release session and don't need the buzzkill.
Post by: Iain on January 22, 2008, 12:10:49 PM
You have to understand that while there were differences between the two (e.g. nazism allowing pseudocapitalist economy), they were both versions of socialism.
He doesn't have to accept anything of the sort. From a couple of quick google searches I see that Nazi=socialist has become something of an article of faith.
Doesn't mean its right. Doesn't mean it grasps the full complexity of the situation. Doesn't mean you and others aren't just Godwinning and trying to deny an association that Wooderson ("It is more useful to simply regard Nazism and Stalinism (etc.) as outside the political spectrum") and others are explicitly not trying to lay at right-wingers doors.
From my recollections there is much dispute regarding pinning down what National Socialism is. As I alluded to above, for many it seemed to be about expediency, a route to power. Something like that was supposedly said about Goering pre-trial (and pre-suicide) - that he was the type of man who would have done anything at any time in order to gain power and influence, utterly amoral.
And on a separate issue and aimed at a separate poster - did we see the left/right - authoritarian/libertarian axis and the position it placed the present British prime minister? Funny how far apart it placed him from Stalin and Hitler, in fact it put him well into the right wing and less authoritarian than Bush. Fascinating.
Post by: wooderson on January 22, 2008, 12:22:52 PM
Quote
Ironically, you are doing the same thing you criticize others for.
No, I'm not. I am explicitly not laying Nazism at the foot of either capitalism or American conservatism or any other mainstream (or quasi-mainstream) ideology. Stalinism and Nazism existed beyond ideology as we know it. There were dueling elements of nationalist pride (Stalin being rather fond of the strongest Tsars, playing them up for popular consumption) and desire on the part of one individual for absolute power that are difficult to understand. Even compared to other authoritarian regimes, be they Mao or Franco or Pinochet or apartheid South Africa - the level of megalomania involved is remarkable.
It is ironic, however, that you try to accuse me of altering the definitions to suit - when it is actually your argument that is outside the mainstream.
Quote
You have to understand that while there were differences between the two (e.g. nazism allowing pseudocapitalist economy), they were both versions of socialism
They were different, but the same. Uh, ok...The basic fallacy here is that you're going to look at the 'capitalist' economy of Nazi Germany (in terms of private ownership and profit-making - not a laissez-faire situation, but they never actually exist) and decide that it's really 'pseudocapitalist' because they were like, totally, closet socialists man. Why? Just because, man. Like, it says socialist in their name, man.
Post by: CAnnoneer on January 22, 2008, 01:23:12 PM
It is ironic, however, that you try to accuse me of altering the definitions to suit - when it is actually your argument that is outside the mainstream.
Mainstream of what? The leftist propaganda in school or your own bizarre definitions?
Maybe we need to go back to the basics and look at definitions that normal people use:
Main Entry: so?cial?ism
Pronunciation: \ˈsō-shə-ˌli-zəm\
Function: noun
Date: 1837
1: any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods
2 a: a system of society or group living in which there is no private property b: a system or condition of society in which the means of production are owned and controlled by the state
3: a stage of society in Marxist theory transitional between capitalism and communism and distinguished by unequal distribution of goods and pay according to work done
Stalinism satisfies 1, 2b, 3. Nazism satisfies 1, 2b. Ergo, both are versions of socialism.
You have to decouple characteristics as in a linear orthogonal decomposition in linear algebra. Nazism was ultranationalist but stalinism was internationalist. Both were totalitarian. Both used forced resettlements. Both used slave labor camps as political tools. Nazism made use of private ownership and private corporations but subjugated them to central planning and also added slave labor. Stalinism did not use corporations, at least not internal ones, but also used central planning and slave labor. Both were socialist.
Looking at the above, they were quite more similar than dissimilar. Also, saying that both existed in some 9th dimension outside whatever you call normal is poorly defined and thus meaningless.
Post by: K Frame on January 22, 2008, 01:44:08 PM
I'll just say I'm avoiding the Christmas rush.