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Kasz216 on 30 November 2009
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Rath said:
Kasz216 said:
Rath said:
Tyrannical said:

Jew hating and WWII aside, Hitler did transform a broken bankrupt Germany back into an econmic world power in short order. I suppose some countries think they could put to use some of his ideas that don't include concentration camps and world wars. Liberals seem to forget that Hitler was a Socialist.

Having socialist in the party name does not make Hitler a socialist.

Hitler wasn't a socialist, to say that is to have a complete misunderstanding of him economically and politically.

I'm curious why you would think this to be the case.

People generally refer to the democracies of europe as socialist as well.  Yet they don't follow what some consider the main socialist tenent.  Aka ownership of the means of the production by the people.

Using the textbook definition of socialism (and communism for that matter) there has never been a socialist or communist government in existance.

Few people have issues with calling Stalin a Communist even though the government ran the means of production... when in reality such things were supposed to be run by the people with a near nonexistant government after a couple decades.

Unless you want to argue there are no socialists you'd need to find a context of what you consider socialism different from the textbook definition.

I'm interested to see what context you consider "socialism."

I consider a bunch of the democracies in Europe to be social democracies with mixed economies.

I consider the USSR to be socialist - at least up until late in its life. It was a centrally planned economy with huge amounts of state ownership, it wasn't absolutley purely socialist but it was as far to that end of the spectrum as I know of in any significant country. Socialism requires public ownership - depending on how you view it this could be centrally controlled (ie by the state) or communually. USSR fits the first definition.

The Nazi's never implemented anything really resembly socialism, their economy was far closer to being Keynesian than socialist. However as I have said before their economic model was never really defined - Hitler often said that the economy was something of little importance as far as he was concerned.

You keep saying their economic model wasn't well defined... but it was.  Because they were in charge...  with ultimate authority.

To see there economic policy all you need to do is look at how they ran things.

It started off very kensiyan.  Then they went authoritarian doing what was best with the state with the rational that was also best for the people.


Just as you consider Europeon Democracies, Socialized Democracies... in many ways Nazi Germany was a Socialized Dictatorship.

State planning of buisness actually became the norm for Nazi Germany towards the middle of their rule all the way towards the end.  They gave the buisness owners imput but the final decisions about what buisnesses did were government run.  Much like the USSR.