National Socialism being 'Right Wing'

@wheatbeer:

Maybe a fruitful question would be: how did Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union differ in practice?

The first difference that comes to mind has to do with their economic systems, both in theory and in practice.  The USSR’s economic philosophy was, at least in terms of its general lines, Marxist (at least to my knowledge, since economics – Marxist or otherwise – isn’t my strong suit).  Philosphically, Marxism was an anathema to the Nazis.  To give just one example: soon after he came to power, Hitler granted German workers the May Day holiday they had demanded…then abolished the labour unions the following day.

In practice, the USSR under Stalin featured collectivized farms, state-owned industries, centralized economic planning (the notorious Five-Year Plans being an example) and, as far as I know, very little private-sector activity (at least officially).  Nazi Germany’s economy, especially during WWII, was a complicated mixture of private enterprise and state control which has been described as “falling between the barstools” of the USSR’s centralized economy and the USA’s system of free-market capitalism.  To my knowledge, the big industrial companies like Krupp remained in private hands, but their businesses were heavily involved in manufacturing things for the government and the Wehrmach, with government and/or military representatives dictating specifications to them (sometimes in the course of acrimonious arguments).

LHoffman,
Certainly that works as a contrast since the Soviets did foment revolution in their own mold.

CWOMarc,
I was hinting at that by mentioning class dynamics, but I wasn’t sure how and to what extent the Nazi state altered base economic organization. Clearly, they didn’t come anywhere near the Soviets in terms of radical economic reorganization (Soviet agriculture was particularly shocking).

@wheatbeer:

I wasn’t sure how and to what extent the Nazi state altered base economic organization.

One major economic change that occurred in Germany as the war progressed was an increasing reliance on foreign workers.  These ranged from people who had “volunteered” to various degrees (for instance in exchange for the repatriation of prisoners of war) to conscripts and deportees (see Vichy France’s STO, the Service de Travail Obligatoire) to outright slave labour (as in the notorious Mittelwerk complex).  These were employed to fill the gap caused by the absorption of German men into the armed forces, and by the Nazi regime’s initial reluctance to bring German women into the industrial workforce.  The result, ironically, was that Berlin (and other big urban areas) became precisely what Hitler had hated so much about Vienna as a young man: a city full of foreigners.

@LHoffman:

@CWO:

You’ve both mentioned the possible need for a two-dimensional graph, and I was thinking along the same lines.  Here’s something I’ve just put together as a possible model.  I’ve deliberately not positioned any political systems (or historic states) anywhere on it, but it occured to me that some of them might potentially fit in more than one place, depending on whether one is discussing pure ideology or practical politics (which gets back to one of the points LHoffman made earlier).  And to pick up on something Wheatbeer mentioned, some variables wouldn’t even show up on this chart – for instance, how would one position a party that was (for example) socially progressive but fiscally conservative?  I think a separate chart would be needed for those elements.

Yeah, I had been thinking about the Soviet Union (or really any Communist nation in history). Even though the communist model is based on equality of all, the proletariat, etc… in practice they have all had a very stratified society. Or at the very least divided into the political/military elites and regular citizens. Oligarchical rather than totally egalitarian.

Ideology and reality are 2 different things.  A particular ideology might want certain circumstances but reality pushes it in a different direction.  For example, the Leninists hoped for a more libertarian society–but it didn’t happen that way, given the pressures of war, the inheritance of the traditions of the Russian state (known for brutality, secret police, contempt for human rights, and the like), and the Leninists’ contempt for Western liberal standards.

Similarly, many national socialists in Germany would have liked far more radical changes in economic organization and religious life but it was impossible given the demands of war and the need to placate the masses as well as the industrialists.

Many theorists of the 40s-50s argued there was a worldwide trend toward buerocratic collectivism.  I think the Cold War actually intensified this trend–both powers gravitated towards stratified buerocratic oligarchy as they competed with one another.

One more point to keep in mind is that the Stalinist turn in the Soviet Union was not percieved as a “leftist” move–on the contrary, Lenin characterized his ideological opponents in Western Europe as “infantile leftists”, and Stalin himself was not considered a leftist or an internationalist, although he did end up adopting many Trotskyist policies after he expelled Trotsky, and Stalin was a materialist theoretically.

Left/right may be somewhat useful when talking about dreams and/or ideology, as long as one clearly defines what one means by left and right, but it is probably useless when talking about reality.

One last point–I can’t commend any left/right spectrum that places anarchists on the right.  Anarchists tend to argue against ownership of land or means of production, and tend to argue that meaningful liberty requires meaningful equality.  And they are anti-authoritarian and anti-hierarchy.  These are traditionally leftist notions.  It is interesting how the anarcho-capitalists have taken up the Old Left idea of anti-statism and made it theirs.  The irony is that the socialists in the 19th century (including even Marx) shared this dream of doing away with the state.  The turn towards left ‘statism’ seems to have occurred largely after 1900 and the emergence of ‘progressive’ political parties that entered parliament and implemented many socialist ideas on a national level.

@Zhukov44:

The thing to keep in mind is that ideology and reality are 2 different things.  A particular ideology might want certain circumstances but reality pushes it in a different direction. […] Left/right may be somewhat useful when talking about dreams and/or ideology, as long as one clearly defines what one means by left and right, but it is probably useless when talking about reality.

This reminds me of the old joke about a new invention being demonstrated before a committee, whose members are all impressed by its performance except for one person who asks the inventor, “It obviously works in practice, but does it work in theory?”  :lol:

@Zhukov44:

Many theorists of the 40s-50s argued there was a worldwide trend toward buerocratic collectivism.  I think the Cold War actually intensified this trend–both powers gravitated towards stratified buerocratic oligarchy as they competed with one another.

Interesting thought. More than a grain of truth perhaps.

@Zhukov44:

One last point–I can’t commend any left/right spectrum that places anarchists on the right.  Anarchists tend to argue against ownership of land or means of production, and tend to argue that meaningful liberty requires meaningful equality.  And they are anti-authoritarian and anti-hierarchy.  These are traditionally leftist notions.  It is interesting how the anarcho-capitalists have taken up the Old Left idea of anti-statism and made it theirs.  The irony is that the socialists in the 19th century (including even Marx) shared this dream of doing away with the state.  The turn towards left ‘statism’ seems to have occurred largely after 1900 and the emergence of ‘progressive’ political parties that entered parliament and implemented many socialist ideas on a national level.

If we are just talking about anarchy as it refers to the level of government then, respectfully, yes, anarchists should be at one end (usually called Right) and totalitarian or ultimate government societies should be at the other (usually called Left). That was the point of the Ideological graph, which perhaps is not the right term for it. I agree that anarchists and communists espouse many of the same tenets. However, the ideal of communism must intrinsically be maintained by a surpassing government… or am I wrong? I have not read Das Kapital. Political anarchists, while espousing similar ideals, goes about it in the complete opposite fashion: lack of government. I assume that for the anarchists non-governmental utopia to be maintained everyone must work together with no malice and complete understanding. Talk about a disconnect from reality.

Besides which, it seems like political anarchists are quite different from the literal definition of anarchy (which is what is meant on the spectrums I have included). Just from Google, Anarchy = a state of disorder due to absence or nonrecognition of authority or absence of government and absolute freedom of the individual, regarded as a political ideal. Even if we consider the second portion, it still references absence of government. Did Marx (and Lenin) intend for communism to have no government? If so, they were just advocating an anarchy pipe-dream in which there was no materialism, no personal ownership and fully egalitarian. This would be contravened immediately just because anarchy means people can do what they want without any sort of higher level enforcement.

Capitalism as we know it is very young relative to the age of our species.

I don’t think it’s irrational to believe that some day, humans might transition to something different without the prerequisite of a repressive government apparatus.

@wheatbeer:

Capitalism as we know it is very young relative to the age of our species.

I don’t think it’s irrational to believe that some day, humans might transition to something different without the prerequisite of a repressive government apparatus.

Isn’t that sort of what dialectical materialism says about the inevitable progress of human societies towards a more perfect state, or something along those lines?  (Philosophy is even less my area than economics, so I’m really out of my depth here.)

I don’t predict any particular outcome and I don’t believe that future developments will necessarily improve the human condition.

But I embrace the general concept that material change (notably, technology) will ultimately generate social change.

@LHoffman:

@Zhukov44:

Many theorists of the 40s-50s argued there was a worldwide trend toward buerocratic collectivism.  I think the Cold War actually intensified this trend–both powers gravitated towards stratified buerocratic oligarchy as they competed with one another.

Interesting thought. More than a grain of truth perhaps.

@Zhukov44:

One last point–I can’t commend any left/right spectrum that places anarchists on the right.  Anarchists tend to argue against ownership of land or means of production, and tend to argue that meaningful liberty requires meaningful equality.  And they are anti-authoritarian and anti-hierarchy.  These are traditionally leftist notions.  It is interesting how the anarcho-capitalists have taken up the Old Left idea of anti-statism and made it theirs.  The irony is that the socialists in the 19th century (including even Marx) shared this dream of doing away with the state.  The turn towards left ‘statism’ seems to have occurred largely after 1900 and the emergence of ‘progressive’ political parties that entered parliament and implemented many socialist ideas on a national level.

If we are just talking about anarchy as it refers to the level of government then, respectfully, yes, anarchists should be at one end (usually called Right) and totalitarian or ultimate government societies should be at the other (usually called Left). That was the point of the Ideological graph, which perhaps is not the right term for it. I agree that anarchists and communists espouse many of the same tenets. However, the ideal of communism must intrinsically be maintained by a surpassing government… or am I wrong? I have not read Das Kapital. Political anarchists, while espousing similar ideals, goes about it in the complete opposite fashion: lack of government. I assume that for the anarchists non-governmental utopia to be maintained everyone must work together with no malice and complete understanding. Talk about a disconnect from reality.

Did Marx (and Lenin) intend for communism to have no government? If so, they were just advocating an anarchy pipe-dream in which there was no materialism, no personal ownership and fully egalitarian. This would be contravened immediately just because anarchy means people can do what they want without any sort of higher level enforcement.

This Faq is a pretty good introduction to what (classical) anarchism is all about.

http://anarchism.pageabode.com/afaq/index.html

In general, both communists and anarchists want a stateless communist society where there is widespread equality and liberty.  The big disagreement is over how to bring this about.  See for example Benjamin Tucker for the individualist anarchist take on it.
http://praxeology.net/BT-SSA.htm

Marx believed that a dictatorship of the proletariat (eg, a government, similar to Jacobin France or the Paris Comune) would be necessary as a transitional phase to socialism/communism.  According to Marx, once the means of production was in the hands of local communities instead of capitalists (or kings, or the church), government would eventually wither away.  According to Marx, government is essentially the domination of one class over another.  So for Marx, ‘communism’ describes a stateless society with common or collective ownership of land and the means of production.  ‘Socialism’ or the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ is the transition from captialism to communism under the leadership of a communist party apparatus (eg, where the proletarian class is dominant over the capitalist class).

Marx’s view is distinct from the anarchist tradition, which 1) rejected electoralism and parliamentarism and 2) wanted a direct transition to federalist rule by local unions and community councils 3) is more radical and idealist than the more pragmatic Marxist tradition.  A good illustration of the conflict between socialists and anarchists is the Spanish Revolution.  Revolutionary Catalonia had alot of the features of the society classical anarchism was aiming at.

Anyway, as far as left-right spectrums go, if you want to define right as less government and left as more-government, then I suppose it’s fair enough to put anarchism on the right.  The basic problem is that the above way of defining left/right seems ahistorical (given that originally, the ‘right’ was associated with hierarchy, authority, traditional government etc) and thus introduces more confusion than clarity.

@Zhukov44:

Anyway, as far as left-right spectrums go, if you want to define right as less government and left as more-government, then I suppose it’s fair enough to put anarchism on the right.  The basic problem is that the above way of defining left/right seems ahistorical (given that originally, the ‘right’ was associated with hierarchy, authority, traditional government etc) and thus introduces more confusion than clarity.

Understood, and I do agree. Which, again, is why I tried to come up with some combination of the two which tries to reconcile the differences:

This is imperfect, but better than a simple L-R scale.

@LHoffman:

This is imperfect, but better than a simple L-R scale.

The two blue triangles at the bottom of your chart are making me wonder if perhaps an inverted bell curve would be a good way of describing the continuum – something like this for example:

@Zhukov44:

Anyway, as far as left-right spectrums go, if you want to define right as less government and left as more-government, then I suppose it’s fair enough to put anarchism on the right.Â

And just to follow up on that point: on the new chart I’ve just posted, anarchism would be at the bottom of the chart rather than on the left or the right, with a value of y=0.  The top of the chart could be given a value of, let’s say, y=100, with the USSR and Nazi Germany both sharing the same high y-axis score.  If anarchism (basically, the absence of government) is the term corresponding to value of y=0, I imagine that the opposite concept (the omnipresence and omnipotence of government) could be labeled totalitarianism and that it would apply to all scores of y=100, regardless of where they fit on the x-axis.

@CWO:

@Zhukov44:

Anyway, as far as left-right spectrums go, if you want to define right as less government and left as more-government, then I suppose it’s fair enough to put anarchism on the right.�

And just to follow up on that point: on the new chart I’ve just posted, anarchism would be at the bottom of the chart rather than on the left or the right, with a value of y=0.  The top of the chart could be given a value of, let’s say, y=100, with the USSR and Nazi Germany both sharing the same high y-axis score.  If anarchism (basically, the absence of government) is the term corresponding to value of y=0, I imagine that the opposite concept (the omnipresence and omnipotence of government) could be labeled totalitarianism and that it would apply to all scores of y=100, regardless of where they fit on the x-axis.

Yes, I do very much like this interpretation. While searching for similar scales and images, I found a 3-D representation that used a funnel as a model. The Totalitarian government structure was at some point near the edge of the circle on the top and anarchy was at the bottom of the funnel portion in the middle. Anyway, that reminded me of your curve.

@LHoffman:

Yes, I do very much like this interpretation. While searching for similar scales and images, I found a 3-D representation that used a funnel as a model. The Totalitarian government structure was at some point near the edge of the circle on the top and anarchy was at the bottom of the funnel portion in the middle. Anyway, that reminded me of your curve.

Glad you like it.  I’ve added some new elements to the chart to reflect those points; see the new version below.  I’ve also modified the label of the y-axis to replace “size” with “presence”.  It occured to me that the issue isn’t really government size in a purely quantitative sense (since, for example, the government of a very large democratic country might well be larger than the government of a very small totalitarian one); the issue is really the extent to which the government is “omnipresent and omnipotent” – meaning the extent to which the state has power and control over its citizens.  I used “presence of government” as a short way of expressing this, but there might be a better word than “presence”.

“Presence” is good. Most people (who know what they are talking about) know that size equates to magnitude of presence. However, to allay confusion I think “presence” is the best word choice.

I’ve made a couple more tweaks to the chart.  I’ve clarified that communism and fascism are broad terms, and that the USSR and Nazi Germany were country-specific applications of these political philosophies.  I’ve so added grey zones to try to convey the point that contraditions were found in both countries, as has been discussed in earlier posts.  My impression is that the contraditions were mainly on the x-axis, so I’ve made the grey zones wider than their height.

@Zooey72:

This is not a political thread.

It is a question as to why it is taught that the far right of the political spectrum are the Nazis, and the far left is the old U.S.S.R.  The Nazis and the Soviets were pretty much the same animal, the government makes or brakes you - go against us and we will crush you.  The far right to me would be capitalism taken to the extreme (which we have seen in our history).  Having children work 30 hours a week.  Horrid workplaces.  Low pay.  Etc. etc.

I fail to see how the Nazis were “Extreme Right Wing”, and the Soviets being “Extreme Left Wing”.  They were both the same animal, the government running your life.

I am aware that in the 20s and 30s the Communist and Nazis fought each other for control over Germany.  But to me that is like the ‘Bloods’ and the ‘Crips’ fighting.  There is no ideology, they just want their gang to win.

My ultimate question is what constitutes Nazis being extreme right wing, and the Soviets being extreme left wing?  I guess it is a political question after all, but I want to keep it to the WW2 era.

The Nazis and the Soviets were pretty much the same animal

That depends on the spectrum you’re observing. Certainly, both groups favored a big government, with few constraints on its power, and harsh penalties directed against those who opposed the government. But the envisioned role of government was different for the two groups.

Communists believed in creating equality by cutting people down to size. Sometimes literally. So for example, the kulaks (middle class farmers) had to be wiped out, because they were considered too economically successful.

Unlike the communists, the Nazis did not regard economic equality as some holy grail. Certainly, they wanted to reduce economic disparities between the richest and poorest Germans. Their way of achieving that was to increase the wages of German workers, while providing German workers with heavily subsidized travel opportunities.

Another difference–which has already been pointed out–is that the Nazis were nationalistic in outlook. The communists believed in an eventual one world Marxist government, which for them would result in utopia.

A third difference is outlook about race. The Nazis of course wanted to preserve their own race and their own ethnicity. Even to expand it into Eastern Europe. A number of Marxist theorists concluded that the existence of race was a barrier to the one world revolution for which they hoped. Once the existence of race had been eliminated through miscegenation, the workers of the world would be one step closer to uniting in the hoped-for Marxist revolution. At least, that was the thinking; and that’s why Marxist movements in Western democratic nations have typically promoted policies and social attitudes intended to eventually eliminate the existence of race.

A fourth difference the two groups’ position on the nature versus nurture debate. Marxists seek to create utopia by fundamentally changing human nature. They are viscerally, violently opposed to eugenics; which they associate with Nazism. In order for them to believe in their utopia while opposing eugenics, it was necessary for them to believe that human differences are caused primarily by environmental factors. Change the environment enough, and you can fundamentally change the person. Under Stalin, any Soviet scientist who supported the modern theory of genetics could expect to be shot in the back of the head or sent to a gulag.

Unlike the communists, the Nazis accepted the (scientifically accurate) belief that differences between individuals are caused primarily by differences in genetics. They also added beliefs not supported by science–beliefs motivated by the racial portion of their ideology.

The Nazis wanted to achieve something recognizably German. They celebrated the German language, German culture, German heroes. They envisioned a future in which Europe would contain an increasingly large proportion of blonde haired, blue eyed individuals.

The communist movement was actively hostile to each and every one of those goals. They had their own racial agenda, as important to them as the above agenda was to the Nazis. In the future they envisioned, the people of Europe and the rest of the world would be of mixed race. All local cultures–including Germany’s–would be destroyed; replaced by something created by the united workers of the world. True belief in Marxism requires one to discard traditional notions of fighting for one’s own people, nation, or culture; and to join a movement actively working to eradicate those things. Joining such a movement would be considered treason, at least from a right wing perspective.

To be simple… Look at politics as a square.

• The top side of the square is 100% government control and authority.  The bottom being 0%

• The left hand side of the square is essentially 100% tax.  The right being 0%.

Depending on policy, different groups find themselves at different coordinates in the square.

To answer the original posters question - Communists and Fascists essentially exert the same amount of authority.  But differ in their economic policies.  IE one could be rich in Nazi Germany, where as in communism, the economic freedoms were not as available.  That is one of several conclusions that leads people to see the Nazi’s as right wing.

In simpler terms it’s “Government control of business (Left) vs Business control of Government (Right).”

But is that enough to make the NSDAP a right wing party? In my opinion no. As I feel that all big government is essentially “Left Leaning/Socialistic”.  Meaning that 3/4 of the square is socialism (Anything with more than 50% authority, or 50% tax control of your life)

Again, a very rudimentary and simple perspective, take it or leave it.