As I pointed out earlier, socialism in a democracy invariably transfers wealth from the executive and owner class to the worker class. Which is proof that Hitler was no socialist, despite all the right-wing claims that he was.
Hitler liked to throw around socialist jargon in order to ingratiate himself to the German people, but his actual actions were to impoverish the workers and enrich the ownership class. One of Hitler's first acts, on May 2, 1933, was to outlaw labor unions and make strikes illegal -- one reason why prominent Republicans of the 1930's such as Prescott Bush and Charles Lindbergh loved Hitler. Worker income fell throughout the remainder of the 3rd Reich... according to the Reich Statistical Office, they declined from 20.4 cents an hour in 1932 to 19.5 cents by the middle of 1936 for skilled workers, and 16.1 cents to 13 cents per hour for unskilled labor. The share of all German workers of the national income fell from 56.9% in 1932 to 53.6% in 1938, while capital and business's share rose from 17.4% to 26.6%. Nazi Germany in short was the opposite of democratic socialism -- it transferred wealth from the working majority to the ownership minority, rather than from owners to workers as is true for democratic socialism. Hitler's "national socialism" may have thus been "socialism" in name, but certainly was not modern socialism as practiced by Sweden and other democracies in practice. (Note: All figures courtesy of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William L. Shirer, which of course is not available on the Internet but you can check it out of the library and check page 264 for yourself).
Meanwhile, Hitler's brownshirted goons showed up at all campaign speeches and rallies of opponents and disrupted them and/or beat up supporters. Hmm...
-- Badtux the History Penguin
The Mighty Fang says people who call Hitler socialist are morons. Are you going to disagree with that face?!
Not necessarily morons, but probably misinformed.
ReplyDeleteNazism certainly had more in common with fascism than socialism. Nevertheless, there are excellent arguments to be made against socialism specifically without having to bring Hitler into the conversation.
Deliberately misinformed, you mean. The "Hitler was socialist" nonsense has been floating around white-wing oops right-wing (Freudian slip :) circles for a while now, even to the point where a book was written by some wingnut welfare recipient and published via one of the wingnut welfare book publishing companies (Regnery?). And people like Glenn Beck keep pushing that basic theme. It's just sad that today's right wing is so reliant upon lies and misinformation. For one thing, maintaining a right-wing echo chamber and expelling anybody who brings any inconvenient facts into that echo chamber means that whenever the right gains power the result is inevitably failure, since they believe things that simply are not true and act on those false beliefs. The end result is usually disaster, since they truly believe these false things and thus act in ways that would work in the alternate universe created by the right-wing echo chamber, but don't work in the real world that the rest of us live in. Thus the Presidency of George W. Bush. Sigh.
ReplyDelete- Badtux the no-longer-right-wing Penguin
I have been researching the incident involving General Smedley Butler - that's his real name. He was a decorated (2 Congressional Medals of Honor) retired and famous when he was being recruited by Wall Street (duPonte and JP Morgan) to lead a militay fascist coup.
ReplyDeleteThe facts suggest that the plot was far more serious than history admits but Butler wanted to prove who was involved and played along with it for months to get proof - he had names but no evidence. This threw off the timetable and element of surprise.
But the fact is, in FDRs first term, Wall Street embraced and almost implemented fascism i this country. The plot was thwarted by one man who never was recognized for his act of patitism.
If you don't like a little socialism don't fuss about a health care plan for everyone, pay for your own or die.
ReplyDeleteIf you don't like a little socialism don't bitch if the roads start getting worse.
I don't have a problem with socialism done properly, I have a problem with the greed in it.
When people use the Hitler was a socialist argument it usually means they have nothing to counter your argument with.
ReplyDeleteNot me, BT.
ReplyDeleteNever.
All hail TMF.
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