Which Nazis read any Marxist works?

Discussions on the propaganda, architecture and culture in the Third Reich.
trekker
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Re: Which Nazis read any Marxist works?

#31

Post by trekker » 16 Sep 2015, 09:04

wm wrote:The German Social-Democrats were a part of the Labour and Socialist International. And its program was so radical its members could be called without any exaggeration communists today.
1) Radicality of a program is not a proper criteria for defining communists.
2) Calling people who lived 80 years ago communists because today they meet someone's standards for communists is incorrect.
wm wrote:Even the communists weren't the communists we know today.
Of course there are evolutions of political parties and programs in time and there are differences among communist parties and programs at a particular time but trying to input different types of communists is incorrect.
wm wrote:The father of fascism, Mussolini called the Soviet communism a kind of Slavonic fascism.
A label doesn't make a fact regardless of who is its author.
wm wrote:The Nazis favored big enterprises for the same reason the Soviet Block favoured big enterprises - because they were big and according to them useful, not because they were privately owned. In the Nazi Germany enterprises were tightly regulated and controlled by the State too.
The nazis favoured big private companies because their rise to power was financed by them. In Auschwitz, they made business with big private companies, supplying labour to them, and with a small family-owned company, buying crematorium ovens from it. None of these companies was forced to do business they did.

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Re: Which Nazis read any Marxist works?

#32

Post by wm » 18 Sep 2015, 00:56

Well, the socialists demanding that "the ownership of the soil should be national" and "all the means of production should pass to the community", as the socialists demanded in the thirties, are called communists today - it seems to be a fitting term.

I maybe mistaken but there is no widely accepted definition of fascism. For most people fascism is what Mussolini or Hitler created, basically it's you will know them by their fruits.
So in this case nothing wrong with an argument from authority. Mussolini is the authority here because fascism was his creation. He chose to call stalinism Slavonic fascism and he didn't mean it as insult. It seems he liked this kind of fascism and approved it.

Of course historians will find differences between those fascisms but for the people living under Nazism or under Slavonic fascism regime there was none. The results were the same, the main difference was that the Slavonic fascism was more evil.

And really the nazis didn't favour big private companies, they favoured corporate groups of private companies - tightly regulated and controlled by the state. And the big private companies were tightly regulated too. Their owners got their profits but frequently they were figureheads. One false move and a big private company was gone (a case in point - Hugo Junkers).


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Re: Which Nazis read any Marxist works?

#33

Post by trekker » 18 Sep 2015, 09:47

wm wrote:Well, the socialists demanding that "the ownership of the soil should be national" and "all the means of production should pass to the community", as the socialists demanded in the thirties, are called communists today - it seems to be a fitting term.
Sincerely with all respect I have to say that in my opinion such reasoning is fundamentally wrong. I believe that past events can only be explained by past circumstances not present. If NSDAP was not a communist party in thirties it cannot be declared a communist party today just because we (some of us) have a different point of view than our ancestors. Imagine calling European rulers from centuries ago stalinists, fascists etc. And then in future, when another -ist will have appeared, the whole history will be re-named by that latest -ist?
In addition: history is made of deeds not words and both individuals and groups are what they do - not what they say. As a wise man used to put it: a word (idea) is not a thing. NSDAP did nothing to make its socialist declarations true. Judged by its actions it was not socialist because the core of a socialist economic system is abolition of private ownership of means of production therefore private seizing of profits.
wm wrote:I maybe mistaken but there is no widely accepted definition of fascism. For most people fascism is what Mussolini or Hitler created, basically it's you will know them by their fruits.
So in this case nothing wrong with an argument from authority. Mussolini is the authority here because fascism was his creation. He chose to call stalinism Slavonic fascism and he didn't mean it as insult. It seems he liked this kind of fascism and approved it.
I doubt that Mussolini was an authority on USSR but the point is not how Mussolini called political system in USSR anyway. He could choose any term he liked. The question is whether his choice is appropriate to describe the reality in both Italy and USSR. It has been widely accepted that political systems in Italy, Germany and USSR have different names – fascism, nazism and stalinism. You suggest using one name only but if all three political systems are similar then a new name can be either fascism or nazism or stalinism or a fourth one. And the point is not in choosing the name but in someone's necessity for choosing a common new name. The more common name the more differencies in objects of reaserch under the common name are hidden. Why should that be necessary?
wm wrote:Of course historians will find differences between those fascisms but for the people living under Nazism or under Slavonic fascism regime there was none. The results were the same, the main difference was that the Slavonic fascism was more evil.
You actually presented the dilemma whether history should be explained by historians upon their reaserch or people (actually individuals in their name) upon their feelings. You suggested the latter which in my opnion is the end of history as a science and its substitution with politics.

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Re: Which Nazis read any Marxist works?

#34

Post by Alixanther » 18 Sep 2015, 17:04

trekker wrote: In addition: history is made of deeds not words and both individuals and groups are what they do - not what they say. As a wise man used to put it: a word (idea) is not a thing. NSDAP did nothing to make its socialist declarations true. Judged by its actions it was not socialist because the core of a socialist economic system is abolition of private ownership of means of production therefore private seizing of profits.

While I agree that when analysing a doctrine one should take into account actions rather than words, I'd say that NSDAP was as socialist as any other socialist or social-democratic party. They were kept from implementing their "reforms" and - for instance if you real Ohlendorf's excerpts - you'll realize that he - amongst many others - was unhappy about the general direction of the economy and wanted things go differently. There were 2 major problems with NSDAP regarding political power - first, they were stripped of their power by the military since '34 and only had influence in administrative areas rather than economic ones and second, it was even more heteroclitical than the Bolschewik party - which allegedly had a hardline, no-compromise marxist wing (people who could not accept even Lenin's NEP), a moderate one with Stalin, menshewiks and the rest. Eventually all the bolshewik wings were purged as "deviationists" in order to keep them in check with the so-called "moderate" one whom Stalin represented, but you can see nothing of the sort in the NSDAP. They kept absorbing members from almost all German political spectrum (except the conservatives who they purged) until they became politically irrelevant.The longer they stay in power, the less power they wield. Hitler preferred to make himself some sort of primus inter pares and claimed monopoly on political decisions - only to gave in eventually to the industry and military leaders, as he saw fit.
While your assertion ("the core of a socialist economic system is abolition of private ownership of means of production therefore private seizing of profits") could be true, not even Lenin went full throttle towards this goal - see the NEP I mentioned above. The pursue of other socialist parties was even less liniar. If you take these into account and acknowledge the impotence of NSDAP to impose ideology lines to Hitler, opportunist supreme, you realize that NSDAP was as socialist as it could, for as long as it could.
Lebensborn, for instance, was a typical collectivist initiative of stripping parental rights from the family and raising the kids through the State. Hardly anything more leftist than this one.
When getting into the Soviet Union, the decision was made to keep the collective farms "as is" and go on. If they were "ideologically opposed" to the left, they'd have changed the economic realities in a split second. Not to mention one of the Russian peasants' opposition to Hitler was exactly this, they haven't got their former land back. Why supporting his regime? If something is countereffective, then it's ideological.

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Re: Which Nazis read any Marxist works?

#35

Post by wm » 18 Sep 2015, 22:14

trekker wrote:In addition: history is made of deeds not words and both individuals and groups are what they do - not what they say. As a wise man used to put it: a word (idea) is not a thing. NSDAP did nothing to make its socialist declarations true. Judged by its actions it was not socialist because the core of a socialist economic system is abolition of private ownership of means of production therefore private seizing of profits.
Well, the 1930 socialists demanded the abolition, today they don't. And they still call themselves socialists.

The Nazi actually did a lot for the little men, lets see:
- National Socialist People's Welfare: a country wide social welfare organization,
- National Socialist War Victim's Care: a social welfare organization for veterans,
- Winter Relief of the German Peoples: with the none shall starve nor freeze slogan, provided for the less fortunate Germans during winter,
- 'Reich Labour Service, mitigated the effects of unemployment,
- German Labour Front: the Nazi trade union organization:
The employees were given relatively high set wages and security of employment, and dismissal was increasingly made difficult. Social security and leisure programmes were started, canteens, breaks and regular working times were established, and German workers were generally satisfied by what the DAF gave them in repayment for their absolute loyalty.
- Strength through Joy: free concerts, plays, libraries, day trips, holidays for workers,
- Beauty of Work: workplace improvements,
- National Vocational Competition: an annual vocational competitions,
- cheap radios (people's receivers), cheap cars (people’s cars) , cheap refrigerators (the Volkskühlschrank), even planes (the Volksflugzeug - People’s Aircraft).

For comparison the thoroughly socialistic Soviet Bloc had only (not quite) cheap radios :)
trekker wrote:The question is whether his choice is appropriate to describe the reality in both Italy and USSR. It has been widely accepted that political systems in Italy, Germany and USSR have different names – fascism, nazism and stalinism. You suggest using one name only but if all three political systems are similar then a new name can be either fascism or nazism or stalinism or a fourth one. And the point is not in choosing the name but in someone's necessity for choosing a common new name. The more common name the more differencies in objects of reaserch under the common name are hidden. Why should that be necessary?
Certainly the names are readily recognizable. But except that, in practice, are they helpful for anything?
Let's assume I'm a Czech plumber employing two unskilled helpers in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. I'm trying to decide who I'm going to support politically: the communists, the socialists or the Nazis.
They tell me the main difference is the the ownership of the means of production. So in this case the choice is easy - I should become a Nazi.

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Re: Which Nazis read any Marxist works?

#36

Post by trekker » 20 Sep 2015, 12:09

Alixanther wrote:
/.../ There were 2 major problems with NSDAP regarding political power - first, they were stripped of their power by the military since '34 /.../ The longer they stay in power, the less power they wield. Hitler preferred to make himself some sort of primus inter pares and claimed monopoly on political decisions - only to gave in eventually to the industry and military leaders, as he saw fit. /.../
The point is that NSDAP was political party in power therefore responsable for the outcome. If part of its power shifted to military leaders NSDAP is to blame for it. If part of its power shifted to Hitler himself NSDAP is to blame for it. That is true even under the assumption that military leaders and Hitler were not NSDAP. It is common for rulers and their supporters to find excuse for their failure but there can be no excuse. Power brings obligation. In Gemany, in USSR and elsewhere. To get rid of obligation the ruler can resign.

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Re: Which Nazis read any Marxist works?

#37

Post by trekker » 20 Sep 2015, 12:13

There still seems to be some misunderstanding which makes me repeat myself. It may look like I want to act as an advocate of a particular party/system/ country but I don't. I just used to read some marxist works and as far as I know it basically goes like this:
1) Communist party of Russia led by Lenin (who was Marx's follower) seized power in Russia. After their seizure of power (called socialist revolution) they introduced socialist economic system characterized by predominant state ownership of means of production.
2) Socialist individuals/movements/parties existed before Marx and have existed ever since. Their programs are characterized by their will for improvements of the position of workers through modification of the capitalist economic system. The point of distinction between socialists and communist is abolition of private ownership of means of production which historically kept socialists within the capitalist economic system and pushed communists into socialist (also called communist – see my previous posts) economic system.

Starting from above:
a) I claim that NSDAP cannot be called a communist party. I don't say it cannot be called a socialist party.
b) I claim that economic system in Gemany was capitalist not socialist (also called communist – see my previous posts).

So when Alixanther and wm point out that NSDAP was a socialist party and when they list its credit for improving living standard of German workers in 1930's I don't oppose. I just state that this facts don't make NSDAP a communist party. Of course, we shouldn't forget that only those workers benefited from NSDAP policy who were not in camps and prisons and that all benefits were wiped out in 1940's. That's why NSDAP socialists have a special name – nazis. We cannot pretend we don't know about it. NSDAP members were socialists who turned into nazis. They earned their own name. (Similarly, communists in USSR got a special name – stalinists.)

So, actually I urge that names/terms are used according to established definitions and practice not according to political preference.

The question was whether in practice names are helpful for anything. I could easily ask back: If they are not helpful why should someone want to change them? Instead, let me analyze the suggestion to call political system in USSR Slavonic fascism rather than stalinism. Two different names indicate two political systems which are different by their characteristics and/or their genesis. Calling thy system in USSR fascism indicates that both systems in Italy and USSR are the same, namely fascist. Can that be proven? Let's assume it can. But then, why Slavonic fascism? If both systems are equal than the term fascism should suffice. The addition Slavonic to fascism in USSR indicates that both systems are not the same and we need two names: fascism (in Italy) and Slavonic fascism (in USSR). Starting from fascism and stalinism and arriving to fascism and Slavonic fascism what have we achieved? The answer is clear: we have satisfied someone's political desire to picture stalinism in USSR as basically the same yet worse than fascism in Italy (»more evil«). Instead of tiresome comparison through analysis with uncertain result we used a simple change of names.

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Re: Which Nazis read any Marxist works?

#38

Post by wm » 21 Sep 2015, 11:31

Well, couldn't the same line of reasoning be used for German fascism, or Spanish fascism? After all they were different too.

Bu anyway so far, it seems we have to two litmus tests available to distinguish between communism and fascism:
- fascism tolerated the existence of private means of production (under the guise of corporatism), communism didn't,
- the fathers of communism and fascism were different persons.
Is there something else?

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Re: Which Nazis read any Marxist works?

#39

Post by trekker » 21 Sep 2015, 14:16

wm wrote: Bu anyway so far, it seems we have to two litmus tests available to distinguish between communism and fascism:
- fascism tolerated the existence of private means of production (under the guise of corporatism), communism didn't,
- the fathers of communism and fascism were different persons.
It seems we don't go along very well and I don't want neither to repeat myself nor to discuss socialism/communism. Sorry. It's even off the topic.

Just to show what I mean let me tell you that when asking to compare fascism and communism I don't know what to compare:
1) Mussolini's fascist ideas and Marx's communist ideas?
2) political system of Italy under Mussolini (fascism) with political system of USSR under Stalin (stalinism)?
3) economic system of Italy under Mussolini (capitalism) with economic system of USSR under Stalin (socialism, also called communism in the West)?

The statement that communism (as socialism is called in the West) didn't tolerate the existance of private means of production is not correct. In Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia there were private farmers and private artisans and even private small industrial business (under the label of artisans). The latter cooperated with large state-owned companies as their suppliers.

Regards.

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Re: Which Nazis read any Marxist works?

#40

Post by Haven » 21 Sep 2015, 18:08

I think there may be a problem with the way many U.S. conservatives view the Left/Right paradigm. Recently, it has become popular for US nationalists/conservatives to view ALL political movements as being either Anti-State and right-wing (i.e., modern day US nationalists/conservatives/libertarians) while all others are “Statists” and left-wing (Democrats, social democrats, socialists, communists, fascists).
This particular formulation was developed during the 1920’s, but became popular on the Right during the late 1980’s-early 1990s. Popular conservative literature among right-wing activists in the US even have a book called “Liberal Fascism” by Jonah Goldberg. He posits that all progressive and liberal and leftists movements logically led to European fascism. And it’s the same today, for many American conservatives. They are not being ironic by comparing Hitler to Obama.

Even among the Right there are disagreements to the validity of this “peculiar” formulation. Here among most academics and theorists, the view is that most modern day US nationalists/conservatives/libertarians are “Right-Wing Statists.” While anything left to a Blue Dog Democrat is a “Left-Wing Statest.”

I write this, because I get the sense that many of the American Conservatives who struggle with calling Fascists “right-wing” are probably using the Goldberg paradigm.

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Re: Which Nazis read any Marxist works?

#41

Post by Haven » 21 Sep 2015, 18:25

I think there may be a problem with the way many U.S. conservatives view the Left/Right paradigm. Recently, it has become popular for US nationalists/conservatives to view ALL political movements as being either Anti-State and right-wing (i.e., modern day US nationalists/conservatives/libertarians) while all others are “Statists” and left-wing (Democrats, social democrats, socialists, communists, fascists).
This particular formulation was developed during the 1920’s, but became popular on the Right during the late 1980’s-early 1990s. Popular conservative literature among right-wing activists in the US even have a book called “Liberal Fascism” by Jonah Goldberg. He posits that all progressive and liberal and leftists movements logically led to European fascism. And it’s the same today, for many American conservatives. They are not being ironic by comparing Hitler to Obama.

Even among the Right there are disagreements to the validity of this “peculiar” formulation. Here among most academics and theorists, the view is that most modern day US nationalists/conservatives/libertarians are “Right-Wing Statists.” While anything left to a Blue Dog Democrat is a “Left-Wing Statest.”

I write this, because I get the sense that many of the American Conservatives who struggle with calling Fascists “right-wing” are probably using the Goldberg paradigm.

(I think I may have posted this reply on another part of this thread, I apologize).

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Re: Which Nazis read any Marxist works?

#42

Post by wm » 21 Sep 2015, 21:00

I don't deny that the names means something. I only argue they are of limited use, fuzzy and even deceiving.
1930 socialism is not 2015 socialism, 1930 Soviet communism is not 1970 Soviet communism, they are quite different animals. But the names stay the same.

According to this classification Stalinism and Nazi fascism are as far from themselves as possible. But it seems the main difference is their attitude towards private means of production, and both implemented many marxist ideas.

In the end it seems these names are just labels, substitutes for what happened in Germany, Italy, Spain or Russia. They have no meaning or explanation powers on their own. We could label them A, B, C it be done with it.

This is why it so hard to decide if the Nazis were socialists or not. Everyone cared for the little man, not only socialists.
Some movements can't be classified at all using such a limited classification. The Polish ruling party Sanacja was so different it has to be placed under its own label Sanacja. Not very helpful for anything.

But if we divide them according to implemented/proposed power structure, it is much clearer:
nazism, stalinism = totalitarianism, later genocidal totalitarianism,
Italian fascism = totalitarianism,
Spanish fascism = dictatorship,
Yugoslavia, the Eastern Bloc = dictatorship or authoritarian democracy,
1930 socialists = illiberal (empty) democracy,
Polish Sanacja = authoritarian democracy.

Haven wrote:Even among the Right there are disagreements to the validity of this “peculiar” formulation. Here among most academics and theorists, the view is that most modern day US nationalists/conservatives/libertarians are “Right-Wing Statists.” While anything left to a Blue Dog Democrat is a “Left-Wing Statest.”
Right wing/left wing seems spurious here. Statists, big government supporters is sufficient to define those people. The end results will be the same - illiberal democracy, there are elections and democratic institutions but the real power is in the hands of bureaucrats.
Haven wrote:This particular formulation was developed during the 1920’s, but became popular on the Right during the late 1980’s-early 1990s. Popular conservative literature among right-wing activists in the US even have a book called “Liberal Fascism” by Jonah Goldberg. He posits that all progressive and liberal and leftists movements logically led to European fascism.
I suppose it rather led to communism/stalinism or fascism. At that time lots of people regarded democracy and capitalism as failures.
Those people, for example socialists, wanted semi-authoritarian rule of wise people. But then the logical question was why semi.
To create a new and better world fast and effectively a fully-authoritarian rule seemed better. After all the wise people in power know what they are doing, the "semi" only makes their work harder.

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Re: Which Nazis read any Marxist works?

#43

Post by Haven » 22 Sep 2015, 03:10

wm,

Just as academics would never let the intellectuals and activists within the Nazi movement define the political and social terms that developed in Western Civilization, they would not let the intellectuals and activists within the Republican Party do the same.

For most academics, I suspect, they see that anti-state rhetoric is popular among Republican Party’s activists and intellectuals, and they would all agree that they (Republicans) perceive themselves as the vanguard against a growing state apparatus. However, their time leading the State tends to demonstrate that they have no problem with a big intrusive State, as long as it is in the cause of right-wing priorities, like an expanded military, a police state that disciplines particular citizens, and a social welfare system that is strictly available to the “real” Americans. The anti-state rhetoric is really the language of defending a right-wing state. Ask most of the Libertarians within the Libertarian Party how they feel and think about the way American right-wingers have co-opted Libertarian discourse.

That is not to say that studying how they saw themselves in the world isn’t valuable, both Republicans and Nazi’s. As a matter of fact, I am fascinated to no end by how Nazi’s viewed themselves and Western civilization. I can spend hours reading Nazi literature and propaganda. But they don’t get to define the terms, even though I am fascinated by them. I mean they accused America of being Bolshevik!

I apologize for getting OT, but I read American conservatives struggling with how most of the West defines Right & Left and thought I could shed some light to the non-Americans.

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Re: Which Nazis read any Marxist works?

#44

Post by Haven » 24 Sep 2015, 16:43

In both of these works, The Russian Roots of Nazism: White Emigres & the Making of National Socialism, 1917-1945 by Michael Kellogg and The Ideological Origins of Nazi Imperialism by Woodruff D. Smith, the argument is made that pro-Imperialism literature/traditions of Europe had a profound influence/foundation, more so than Marxism. In addition, it seems that Hitler and most of National Socialism viewed Capitalism and Marxism are the 2 sides of the same coin.

I found this in Kellogg’s book:

Rosenberg also linked finance capitalism and Bolshevism with scheming
Jews in two of his early major works. In his 1922 book Plague in Russia!,
he asserted: “If one understands capitalism as the high-powered exploitation
of the masses by a quite small minority, then there has never been a
greater capitalist state in history than the Jewish Soviet government since
the days of October 1917.”25 In his 1923 treatise Die Protokolle der Weisen
von Zion und die j¨udische Weltpolitik (The Protocols of the Elders of Zion
and JewishWorld-Politics), he labeled “Jewish high finance as the breeder of
Marxism, of terrorism,” and he described the “world political cooperation
of Jewish high finance with the most extremeMarxism.”He further argued:
“Nowadays the red and golden Internationals have openly become the Jewish
National as they earlier secretly were.”26 Rosenberg thus claimed that
whereas earlier, Jews had sought to control events from behind the scenes,
they had now openly emerged as the driving force behind both finance
capitalism and Bolshevism.

[…]

In a November 1920 essay, “‘Jewry ¨uber
alles’” (“‘Jewry above Everything’”), Eckart maintained that both capitalism
and Bolshevism represented means to the end of a Jewish world dictatorship.
He wrote of a prevalent “error” that usually constituted a “conscious lie,”
namely that the Jews, given that they embodied capitalism to a certain
degree, would never launch Bolshevism or even support it since it sought
to destroy capital. He insisted: “As if the Jewish people, if it were one day
to have unlimited power on earth, would not have everything under the
sun, all gold and silver and the other riches of the world, everything but
yet everything!”30 Capitalism and Bolshevism for Eckart thus represented
Jewish tools for achieving world domination. (Kellogg, 224-225)

[…]

During his close political collaboration with Scheubner-Richter’s Aufbau,
Hitler often treated circumstances inside the Soviet Union to back
his claim that Jewish finance capitalism lurked behind Bolshevism. In a
September 1922 speech dealing with the Soviet Union’s “New Economic
Policy,” he argued that private capitalism was “‘temporarily’” being reinstated,
But

“the only capitalists are the Jews, and so the circle that Marxist theory aims at is
complete: expropriation of private capitalism through socialization to state capitalism
and back to private capitalism. In this process capital only changed big
wigs and work methods changed. Only the Jew is proprietor and there is a 14-hour
working day.”

He warned, “A Jewification of the economy as in Russia is inevitably being
carried out among us as well.”35 Hitler thus used perceived atrocious Soviet
conditions as a model of things to come in Germany because of the insidious
drive of Jewish capitalists for wealth and power.

Hitler emphasized during a January 1923 speech that the Marxist theory
of class struggle was a swindle propagated by the Jews. He stressed that
the National Socialist Party firmly believed that the gathering Bolshevik
revolution in Germany “will not concern a struggle between the bourgeoisie
and the proletariat, for, as in Russia, both will become the slaves of him
who has seduced the one and led the other: the Jew. The NSDAP is rather
of the conviction that this is about a racial struggle.”36 By 1923, Hitler
had thoroughly internalized the Aufbau view that Jewish finance capitalists
used Bolshevism to enslave European peoples, most notably Russians and
Germans.

In his post-1923 writings, Hitler also labeled Bolshevism a pernicious
outgrowth of Jewish capitalism. In Mein Kampf, he wrote of Bolshevism
in “Russia” as a means “to give a gang of Jewish journalists and stock
exchange bandits domination over a great people.” In another section of his
autobiography, he warned that the “Marxist shock troops of international
stock exchange capital” sought to:

“break the back of the German national state for good and all . . . with friendly
aid from outside. The armies of France must, therefore, besiege the German state
structure until the Reich, inwardly exhausted, succumbs to the Bolshevistic shock
troop of international Jewish world finance. And so the Jew today is the great
agitator for the complete destruction of Germany.37”

From Kellogg, 223-227.

There is much more. I get the sense that Hitler knew very little concerning Marx. I think he cared less for the ideological and theoretical underpinning the Left and was a better student of their activism and tactics on the street. And that may have been informed, more by Leninism than Marxism. One gets the impression that much of the socialism of the Nazi’s had to do with the organic conservatism of Lebensraum. Much of the pre-Marxist socialism of Europe is grounded in agrarianism which is pre-Industrial.

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Re: Which Nazis read any Marxist works?

#45

Post by Alixanther » 07 Oct 2015, 04:23

trekker wrote:
Alixanther wrote:
/.../ There were 2 major problems with NSDAP regarding political power - first, they were stripped of their power by the military since '34 /.../ The longer they stay in power, the less power they wield. Hitler preferred to make himself some sort of primus inter pares and claimed monopoly on political decisions - only to gave in eventually to the industry and military leaders, as he saw fit. /.../
The point is that NSDAP was political party in power therefore responsable for the outcome. If part of its power shifted to military leaders NSDAP is to blame for it. If part of its power shifted to Hitler himself NSDAP is to blame for it. That is true even under the assumption that military leaders and Hitler were not NSDAP. It is common for rulers and their supporters to find excuse for their failure but there can be no excuse. Power brings obligation. In Gemany, in USSR and elsewhere. To get rid of obligation the ruler can resign.
I'm sure you understand that NSDAP - much like its bolschewik counterpart - was not a party who decided by polls, ballots and other such means (Hitler himself scoffed when some generals later in war tried to persuade him to make peace: "I cannot make any peace unless I put a bullet in my brain").
They were officially in power, however - unless they had executive powers in army, economy or administration - they held as much power as the Japanese emperor during the Shogunate era. Yeah, you might say it was their fault they gave up power - but that's the coup against SA for. While the total number of killings during the '34 double coup (against SA and German conservatives) remained remarkably small (especially compared to purges in other socialist / revolutionary movements), you cannot deny the scare it meant to instill in the rest of NSDAP. Very few dared to oppose or even voice their opinions against Hitler: it was a question of principles before the '34 double coup and a question of survival after '34 double coup.The (older) officer corps were the only ones who argued Hitler: it was only fair, they were fellow conspirators during the '34 double coup.

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