posted September 07, 2009 06:29 PM
Myth: Hitler was a leftist.Fact: Nearly all of Hitler's beliefs placed him on the far right.
Summary
Many conservatives accuse Hitler of being a leftist, on the grounds that his party was named "National Socialist." But socialism requires worker ownership and control of the means of production. In Nazi Germany, private capitalist individuals owned the means of production, and they in turn were frequently controlled by the Nazi party and state. True socialism does not advocate such economic dictatorship -- it can only be democratic. Hitler's other political beliefs place him almost always on the far right. He advocated racism over racial tolerance, eugenics over freedom of reproduction, merit over equality, competition over cooperation, power politics and militarism over pacifism, dictatorship over democracy, capitalism over Marxism, realism over idealism, nationalism over internationalism, exclusiveness over inclusiveness, common sense over theory or science, pragmatism over principle, and even held friendly relations with the Church, even though he was an atheist.
Argument
To most people, Hitler's beliefs belong to the extreme far right. For example, most conservatives believe in patriotism and a strong military; carry these beliefs far enough, and you arrive at Hitler's warring nationalism. This association has long been something of an embarrassment to the far right. To deflect such criticism, conservatives have recently launched a counter-attack, claiming that Hitler was a socialist, and therefore belongs to the political left, not the right.
The primary basis for this claim is that Hitler was a National Socialist. The word "National" evokes the state, and the word "Socialist" openly identifies itself as such.
However, there is no academic controversy over the status of this term: it was a misnomer. Misnomers are quite common in the history of political labels. Examples include the German Democratic Republic (which was neither) and Vladimir Zhirinovsky's "Liberal Democrat" party (which was also neither). The true question is not whether Hitler called his party "socialist," but whether or not it actually was.
In fact, socialism has never been tried at the national level anywhere in the world. This may surprise some people -- after all, wasn't the Soviet Union socialist? The answer is no. Many nations and political parties have called themselves "socialist," but none have actually tried socialism. To understand why, we should revisit a few basic political terms.
Perhaps the primary concern of any political ideology is who gets to own and control the means the production. This includes factories, farmlands, machinery, etc. Generally there have been three approaches to this question. The first was aristocracy, in which a ruling elite owned the land and productive wealth, and peasants and serfs had to obey their orders in return for their livelihood. The second is capitalism, which has disbanded the ruling elite and allows a much broader range of private individuals to own the means of production. However, this ownership is limited to those who can afford to buy productive wealth; nearly all workers are excluded. The third (and untried) approach is socialism, where everyone owns and controls the means of production, by means of the vote. As you can see, there is a spectrum here, ranging from a few people owning productive wealth at one end, to everyone owning it at the other.
Socialism has been proposed in many forms. The most common is social democracy, where workers vote for their supervisors, as well as their industry representatives to regional or national congresses. Another proposed form is anarcho-socialism, where workers own companies that would operate on a free market, without any central government at all. As you can see, a central planning committee is hardly a necessary feature of socialism. The primary feature is worker ownership of production.
The Soviet Union failed to qualify as socialist because it was a dictatorship over workers -- that is, a type of aristocracy, with a ruling elite in Moscow calling all the shots. Workers cannot own or control anything under a totalitarian government. In variants of socialism that call for a central government, that government is always a strong or even direct democracy… never a dictatorship. It doesn't matter if the dictator claims to be carrying out the will of the people, or calls himself a "socialist" or a "democrat." If the people themselves are not in control, then the system is, by definition, non-democratic and non-socialist.
And what of Nazi Germany? The idea that workers controlled the means of production in Nazi Germany is a bitter joke. It was actually a combination of aristocracy and capitalism. Technically, private businessmen owned and controlled the means of production. The Nazi "Charter of Labor" gave employers complete power over their workers. It established the employer as the "leader of the enterprise," and read: "The leader of the enterprise makes the decisions for the employees and laborers in all matters concerning the enterprise." (1)
The employer, however, was subject to the frequent orders of the ruling Nazi elite. After the Nazis took power in 1933, they quickly established a highly controlled war economy under the direction of Dr. Hjalmar Schacht. Like all war economies, it boomed, making Germany the second nation to recover fully from the Great Depression, in 1936. (The first nation was Sweden, in 1934. Following Keynesian-like policies, the Swedish government spent its way out of the Depression, proving that state economic policies can be successful without resorting to dictatorship or war.)
Prior to the Nazi seizure of power in 1933, worker protests had spread all across Germany in response to the Great Depression. During his drive to power, Hitler exploited this social unrest by promising workers to strengthen their labor unions and increase their standard of living. But these were empty promises; privately, he was reassuring wealthy German businessmen that he would crack down on labor once he achieved power. Historian William Shirer describes the Nazi's dual strategy:
"The party had to play both sides of the tracks. It had to allow [Nazi officials] Strasser, Goebbels and the crank Feder to beguile the masses with the cry that the National Socialists were truly 'socialists' and against the money barons. On the other hand, money to keep the party going had to be wheedled out of those who had an ample supply of it." (2)
Once in power, Hitler showed his true colors by promptly breaking all his promises to workers. The Nazis abolished trade unions, collective bargaining and the right to strike. An organization called the "Labor Front" replaced the old trade unions, but it was an instrument of the Nazi party and did not represent workers. According to the law that created it, "Its task is to see that every individual should be able… to perform the maximum of work." Workers would indeed greatly boost their productivity under Nazi rule. But they also became exploited. Between 1932 and 1936, workers wages fell, from 20.4 to 19.5 cents an hour for skilled labor, and from 16.1 to 13 cents an hour for unskilled labor. (3) Yet workers did not protest. This was partly because the Nazis had restored order to the economy, but an even bigger reason was that the Nazis would have cracked down on any protest.
There was no part of Nazism, therefore, that even remotely resembled socialism. But what about the political nature of Nazism in general? Did it belong to the left, or to the right? Let's take a closer look:
The politics of Nazism
The political right is popularly associated with the following principles. Of course, it goes without saying that these are generalizations, and not every person on the far right believes in every principle, or disbelieves its opposite. Most people's political beliefs are complex, and cannot be neatly pigeonholed. This is as true of Hitler as anyone. But since the far right is trying peg Hitler as a leftist, it's worth reviewing the tenets popularly associated with the right. These include:
* Individualism over collectivism.
* Racism or racial segregation over racial tolerance.
* Eugenics over freedom of reproduction.
* Merit over equality.
* Competition over cooperation.
* Power politics and militarism over pacifism.
* One-person rule or self-rule over democracy.
* Capitalism over Marxism.
* Realism over idealism.
* Nationalism over internationalism.
* Exclusiveness over inclusiveness.
* Meat-eating over vegetarianism.
* Gun ownership over gun control
* Common sense over theory or science.
* Pragmatism over principle.
* Religion over secularism.
Let's review these spectrums one by one, and see where Hitler stood in his own words. Ultimately, Hitler's views are not monolithically conservative -- on a few issues, his views are complex and difficult to label. But as you will see, the vast majority of them belong on the far right:
Individualism over collectivism.
Many conservatives argue that Hitler was a leftist because he subjugated the individual to the state. However, this characterization is wrong, for several reasons.
The first error is in assuming that this is exclusively a liberal trait. Actually, U.S. conservatives take considerable pride in being patriotic Americans, and they deeply honor those who have sacrificed their lives for their country. The Marine Corps is a classic example: as every Marine knows, all sense of individuality is obliterated in the Marines Corps, and one is subject first, foremost and always to the group.
The second error is forgetting that all human beings subscribe to individualism and collectivism. If you believe that you are personally responsible for taking care of yourself, you are an individualist. If you freely belong and contribute to any group -- say, an employing business, church, club, family, nation, or cause -- then you are a collectivist as well. Neither of these traits makes a person inherently "liberal" or "conservative," and to claim that you are an "evil socialist" because you champion a particular group is not a serious argument.
Political scientists therefore do not label people "liberal" or "conservative" on the basis of their individualism or collectivism. Much more important is how they approach their individualism and collectivism. What groups does a person belong to? How is power distributed in the group? Does it practice one-person rule, minority rule, majority rule, or self-rule? Liberals believe in majority rule. Hitler practiced one-person rule. Thus, there is no comparison.
And on that score, conservatives might feel that they are off the hook, too, because they claim to prefer self-rule to one-person rule. But their actions say otherwise. Many of the institutions that conservatives favor are really quite dictatorial: the military, the church, the patriarchal family, the business firm.
Hitler himself downplayed all groups except for the state, which he raised to supreme significance in his writings. However, he did not identify the state as most people do, as a random collection of people in artificially drawn borders. Instead, he identified the German state as its racially pure stock of German or Aryan blood. In Mein Kampf, Hitler freely and interchangeably used the terms "Aryan race," "German culture" and "folkish state." To him they were synonyms, as the quotes below show. There were citizens inside Germany (like Jews) who were not part of Hitler's state, while there were Germans outside Germany (for example, in Austria) who were. But the main point is that Hitler's political philosophy was not really based on "statism" as we know it today. It was actually based on racism -- again, a subject that hits uncomfortably closer to home for conservatives, not liberals.
As Hitler himself wrote:
"The main plank in the Nationalist Socialist program is to abolish the liberalistic concept of the individual and the Marxist concept of humanity and to substitute for them the folk community, rooted in the soil and bound together by the bond of its common blood." (4)
"The state is a means to an end. Its end lies in the preservation and advancement of a community of physically and psychically homogenous creatures. This preservation itself comprises first of all existence as a race… Thus, the highest purpose of a folkish state is concern for the preservation of those original racial elements which bestow culture and create the beauty and dignity of a higher mankind. We, as Aryans, can conceive of the state only as the living organism of a nationality which… assures the preservation of this nationality…" (5)
"The German Reich as a state must embrace all Germans and has the task, not only of assembling and preserving the most valuable stocks of basic racial elements in this people, but slowly and surely of raising them to a dominant position." (6)
And it was in the service of this racial state that Hitler encourage individuals to sacrifice themselves:
"In [the Aryan], the instinct for self-preservation has reached its noblest form, since he willingly subordinates his own ego to the life of the community and, if the hour demands it, even sacrifices it." (7)
"This state of mind, which subordinates the interests of the ego to the conservation of the community, is really the first premise for every truly human culture." (8)
Racism or racial segregation over racial tolerance.
"All the human culture, all the results of art, science, and technology that we see before us today, are almost exclusively the creative product of the Aryan." (9)
"Aryan races -- often absurdly small numerically -- subject foreign peoples, and then… develop the intellectual and organizational capacities dormant within them." (10)
"If beginning today all further Aryan influence on Japan should stop… Japan's present rise in science and technology might continue for a short time; but even in a few years the well would dry up… the present culture would freeze and sink back into the slumber from which it awakened seven decades ago by the wave of Aryan culture." (11)
"Every racial crossing leads inevitably sooner or later to the decline of the hybrid product…" (12)
"It is the function above all of the Germanic states first and foremost to call a fundamental halt to any further bastardization." (13)
"What we must fight for is to safeguard the existence and reproduction of our race and our people, the sustenance of our children and the purity of our blood…" (14)
Eugenics over freedom of reproduction
"The folkish philosophy of life must succeed in bringing about that nobler age in which men no longer are concerned with breeding dogs, horses, and cats, but in elevating man himself…" (15)
"The folkish state must make up for what everyone else today has neglected in this field. It must set race in the center of all life. It must take care to keep it pure… It must see to it that only the healthy beget children; that there is only one disgrace: despite one's own sickness and deficiencies, to bring children into the world, and one highest honor: to renounce doing so. And conversely it must be considered reprehensible: to withhold healthy children from the nation. Here the state… must put the most modern medical means in the service of this knowledge. It must declare unfit for propagation all who are in any way visibly sick or who have inherited a disease and therefore pass it on…" (16)
Merit over equality.
"The best state constitution and state form is that which, with the most unquestioned certainty, raises the best minds in the national community to leading position and leading influence. But as in economic life, the able men cannot be appointed from above, but must struggle through for themselves…" (17)
"It must not be lamented if so many men set out on the road to arrive at the same goal: the most powerful and swiftest will in this way be recognized, and will be the victor." (p. 512.)
Competition over cooperation.
"Those who want to live, let them fight, and those who do not want to fight in this world of eternal struggle do not deserve to live." (18)
"It must never be forgotten that nothing that is really great in this world has ever been achieved by coalitions, but that it has always been the success of a single victor. Coalition successes bear by the very nature of their origin the germ of future crumbling, in fact of the loss of what has already been achieved. Great, truly world-shaking revolutions of a spiritual nature are not even conceivable and realizable except as the titanic struggles of individual formations, never as enterprises of coalitions." (19)
"The idea of struggle is old as life itself, for life is only preserved because other living things perish through struggle… In this struggle, the stronger, the more able, win, while the less able, the weak, lose. Struggle is the father of all things… It is not by the principles of humanity that man lives or is able to preserve himself in the animal world, but solely by means of the most brutal struggle… If you do not fight for life, then life will never be won." (20)
Power politics and militarism over pacifism.
Allan Bullock, probably the world's greatest Hitler historian, sums up Hitler's political method in one sentence:
"Stripped of their romantic trimmings, all Hitler's ideas can be reduced to a simple claim for power which recognizes only one relationship, that of domination, and only one argument, that of force." (21)
The following quotes by Hitler portray his rather stunning contempt for pacifism:
"If the German people in its historic development had possessed that herd unity [defined here by Hitler as racial solidarity] which other peoples enjoyed, the German Reich today would doubtless be mistress of the globe. World history would have taken a different course, and no one can distinguish whether in this way we would not have obtained what so many blinded pacifists today hope to gain by begging, whining and whimpering: a peace, supported not by the palm branches of tearful, pacifist female mourners, but based on the victorious sword of a master people, putting the world into the service of a higher culture." (22)
"We must clearly recognize the fact that the recovery of the lost territories is not won through solemn appeals to the Lord or through pious hopes in a League of Nations, but only by force of arms." (23)
"In actual fact the pacifistic-humane idea is perfectly all right perhaps when the highest type of man has previously conquered and subjected the world to an extent that makes him the sole ruler of this earth… Therefore, first struggle and then perhaps pacifism." (24)
One-person rule or self-rule over democracy.
"The young [Nazi] movement is in its nature and inner organization anti-parliamentarian; that is, it rejects… a principle of majority rule in which the leader is degraded to the level of mere executant of other people's wills and opinion." (25)
"The [Nazi party] should not become a constable of public opinion, but must dominate it. It must not become a servant of the masses, but their master!" (26)
"By rejecting the authority of the individual and replacing it by the numbers of some momentary mob, the parliamentary principle of majority rule sins against the basic aristocratic principle of Nature…" (27)
"For there is one thing we must never forget… the majority can never replace the man. And no more than a hundred empty heads make one wise man will an heroic decision arise from a hundred cowards." (28)
"There must be no majority decisions, but only responsible persons, and the word 'council' must be restored to its original meaning. Surely every man will have advisers by his side, but the decision will be made by one man." (29)
"When I recognized the Jew as the leader of the Social Democracy, the scales dropped from my eyes." (30)
"The Western democracy of today is the forerunner of Marxism…" (31)
"Only a knowledge of the Jews provides the key with which to comprehend the inner, and consequently real, aims of Social Democracy." (32)
Capitalism over Marxism.
Bullock writes of Hitler's views on Marxism:
"While Hitler's attitude towards liberalism was one of contempt, towards Marxism he showed an implacable hostility… Ignoring the profound differences between Communism and Social Democracy in practice and the bitter hostility between the rival working class parties, he saw in their common ideology the embodiment of all that he detested -- mass democracy and a leveling egalitarianism as opposed to the authoritarian state and the rule of an elite; equality and friendship among peoples as opposed to racial inequality and the domination of the strong; class solidarity versus national unity; internationalism versus nationalism." (33)
As Hitler himself would write:
"The German state is gravely attacked by Marxism." (34)
"In the years 1913 and 1914, I… expressed the conviction that the question of the future of the German nation was the question of destroying Marxism." (35)
"In the economic sphere Communism is analogous to democracy in the political sphere." (36)
"The Marxists will march with democracy until they succeed in indirectly obtaining for their criminal aims the support of even the national intellectual world, destined by them for extinction." (37)
"Marxism itself systematically plans to hand the world over to the Jews." (38)
"The Jewish doctrine of Marxism rejects the aristocratic principle of Nature and replaces the eternal privilege of power and strength by the mass of numbers and their dead weight." (39)
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“It is absolutely the perfect name,” Dr. Brown said, given the continuing discord among astronomers and the public over whether Pluto should have retained its planetary status.
In mythology, Eris ignited discord that led to the Trojan War.
“She causes strife by causing arguments among men, by making them think their opinions are right and everyone else’s is wrong,” Dr. Brown said. “It really is just perfect.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/15/science/space/15xena.html?_r=1
Lindaland
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