Anarchist Discussion Forums

JudeObscure84 wrote: well my point is that marxism and its heresies are deadly. they are wrong and anything anti-liberal is consituted in my book as flawed. especially if we look at it from historical expierence, right Leevee?

.........when we put limits and measures on what constitutes socialism ( a very flawed and imprecise economic practice to begin with), you can start saying that anything that came in the name of socialism, was not real socialism, and try again, and again, and again....

So then Lenin was not a socialist either! Well, by gum neither was Che Guevara, Mao, The Sandinistas or the Viet Cong.
Leevee, all you are pretty much doing is exactly examining why you are not a socialist. because it does just that, create a new ruling class. this is why you are an anarchist, at least I hope you are, considering that you've read Bakunin, Kroptkin, and Chomsky, which refute socialism and communism in general. Reject Stalin, Lenin and authoritarianism in general. It still doesnt seem to explain though how it is not a marxist heresy or not socialist.

We get the point, but being against capitalism as a form of opportunism doesn't constitute socialism.

But i'm probably getting off topic here. Hitler can only be called socialist in the sense that Lenin could call himself a socialist, yet both of their ideologies result in political power constituting itself as a different ruling class (the bureaucracy), which means that things really don't change. Working people are still alienated in their everyday lives, and ultimately exploited. However, this isn't automatically the result of all radical working class movements. To the point on the other thread about the influence of Sorel, Sorel was himself a Leninist, so to discuss him outside of that context would be a bit dishonest. Appendix III in His Reflections of Violence is entited "In Defense of Lenin" (you can see it on Amazon).

in order to give his reactionary movement a revolutionary character.

Hitler hates the Marxists not for their economics, but because they "stabbed Germany in the back" during World War I with their revolutionary activities. Indeed, he repeatedly claims that Marxism is pro-capitalist; it seeks "only to break the people's national and patriotic backbone and make them ripe for the slave's yoke of international capital and its masters, the Jews." (ibid, p.243) For Hitler, preserving "the economic independence of the nation" from "the international stock exchange" is of paramount importance

My first hope was still that this high treason might still be a more or less local affair. I also tried to bolster up a few comrades in this view. Particularly my Bavarian friends in the hospital were more than accessible to this. The mood there was anything but 'revolutionary.' I could not imagine that the madness would break out in Munich, too. Loyalty to the venerable House of Wittelsbach seemed to me stronger, after all, than the will of a few Jews. Thus I could not help but believe that this was merely a Putsch on the part of the navy and would be crushed in the next few days.
The next few days came and with them the most terrible certainty of my life. The rumors became more and more oppressive. What I had taken for a local affair was now said to be a general revolution. To this was added the disgraceful news from the front. They wanted to capitulate. Was such a thing really possible?

Not until the moment when the Center and the Social Democracy were forced to recognize, to their own grief, that the sympathies of the soldiers were beginning to turn away from the revolutionary parties toward the national movement and reawakening, did they see fit to deprive the troops of suffrage again and prohibit their political activity.
It was illuminating that the Center and the Marxists should have taken this measure, for if they had not undertaken this curtailment of ' civil rights '-as the political equality of the soldiers after the revolution was called-within a few years there would have been no revolution, and hence no more national dishonor and disgrace.

The German national souls kept privately whispering to each other the suspicion that basically we were nothing but a species of Marxism...For to this very day these scatterbrains have not understood the difference between socialism and Marxism

The actual difference between Socialism and Marxism still remains a mystery to these people up to this day.

Really, and what kind of argument would you make to say that it isn't the other way around? What would you say in this instance to prove that Hitler denounced Jews as a roundabout way of denouncing capitalism? After all, Hitler firmly believed in Eugenics, as well as the nationalistic mysticism about the "Aryan" race. If his anti-semitism was a veil for his socialism, then why was it that he carried it out more firmly than any "socalist" policies? His strongest ideological influence came from decidedly non-socalist sources....

This suggests that Hitler's influences came mostly from the grosdeutch style of Germanic nationalism. This, along with the Eugenics and mystical leanings causes one to question claims that the Nazis were purely influenced by socialism, and when they were, it was probably by Stalin's socialism to the East. In my opinion, Stalin's "socialism in one state" achieved the same goals that Hitler wanted to achieve with his German nationalism - submission to the State, strong institutions for crushing dissidents (Gulags), and the suppression of rebellious national groups. Hitler's economic views were probably adapted from the the Soviet Union's policies as a means of rebuilding Germany as an imperial world power, and especially to do so as a means of outpacing the existing powers. That and as a way of getting support during an ongoing economic crisis, with vague promises of work and national greatness.

And the ongoing issue here is how far one can extend a label before it becomes meaningless. Hitler sounds like someone who believes in fairies and unicorns and the Easter Bunny, but who nonetheless goes around insisting that he is a excellent scientist.

"Jew" was just a code word for international capitalist.

Adolf and his classmates soon sensed where the majority of their teachers' loyalties lay. They took the punishment that was required for making sketches of Bismarck, greeting one another with the German "Heil," singing German patriotic songs or wearing a cornflower as a symbol of loyalty to the Prussian house of Hohenzollern. They relished any German victory in the Pacific, Africa or any other part of the world. Like many of his classmates Adolf was developing into a German nationalist. He and his friends, like the intellectuals who favored a natural political map, believed that all Germans should be united under one flag.

"The German national souls kept privately whispering to each other the suspicion that basically we were nothing but a species of Marxism...For to this very day these scatterbrains have not understood the difference between socialism and Marxism.."

only to break the people's national and patriotic backbone and make them ripe for the slave's yoke of international capital and its masters, the Jews."

"the economic independence of the nation" from "the international stock exchange"