Do you consider yourself more left or right wing?

[sc94597]

Tober said:

Chris Hu said:

The Nazi's were not socialist.  The used the word socialist in their name to attract working people even though they pretty much did nothing for working people especially once they took over power.   When they took over power they outlawed workers unions, froze wakes, and outlawed workers strikes.  That sure doesn't sound socialist to me on top of all they privatized more businesses than all other countries in Europe at that time.  And they also put most socialist leaders into concentration camps and outlawed all opposition political parties.  Plus, on the Night of the Long Knives in 1934 they purged and killed all left leaning members from their party.

I don't know where you got this information from. It certainly is not historically complete. The National Socialist Party is a renaming of the German Workers party in 1920. The word Nationalist was at the time not the same how we interpreted it today. Germany as a unified country was still young (1871) and there was a political battle how much power central government should have compared to the individual states. Not dissimilar to today's discussions about the legislative power between the EU (Brussels) and the individual countries, or in the US between federal government and the states. The National Socialist Party sought to centralize power with the promise to solve the economic problems of the time at national level. Hence the moniker Nationalist at the time.

When they did actually won the election with that promise, they absolutely used the power of government as a socialist state. Nationalizing private property; banks, lands and wealth. 

The Nazi's were elected in 1933 against a 24% unemployment rate. Germany was shattered. This halved after the Nazi's where elected. Why? Government programs, that is why! Autobahns and military spending doing the heavy lifting. This economic success also explains why the German people fully supported the Nazi party going forward even into craziness that eventually would lead to the horrors of war.

Nationalization =/= socialism.

The question of federalism is also orthogonal to the socialist question. 

Many historical socialists promoted federalism (i.e Proudhon literally wrote a book extoling it.)  

What makes somebody socialist in the late 19th century onward is whether or not they supported the eventual abolition of the worker-owner relation of production and the class distinction that came with it.

Some socialists (marxist-leninists) promoted democratic centralism, which entailed nationalization of large parts of the political-economy. Although even they left room for cooperativism for certain segments of the economy. 

Other socialists believe(d) in alternative forms of socialization, everything from industrial-agricultural federations of workers (i.e Revolutionary Catalonia, Rojava, Proudhon) to cooperativism (policy of most DemSocs) to guilds (see: G.D.H Cole and Guild socialism.)

The thing that tied them altogether is that they eventually aimed to abolish the primary social class distinction in the capitalist system (workers vs. owners.) 

Nazis weren't socialists because they were class-collaborationists. They believed that social classes were natural (and often tied to one's sub-race makeup) and the various classes should cooperate in their rightful place in society. This is characteristically against everything socialists and the left-wing are for. The left aims to abolish hierarchies, not crystalize them. 

There was a Strasserite-wing, that didn't believe social class should exist within the general German (or greater "Aryan") race, but Chris Hu is correct in that they were purged early on in the Nazi regime. 

Last edited by sc94597 - on 11 September 2025