Why National Socialists (Nazis) are Socialists & Not Patriots

“We are socialists, we are enemies of today’s capitalistic economic system for the exploitation of the economically weak, with its unfair salaries, with its unseemly evaluation of a human being according to wealth and property instead of responsibility and performance, and we are all determined to destroy this system under all conditions.” - Adolph Hitler, May 1, 1927

“We will initiate massive state-subsidized work programs in order to fulfill our goal of full employment at fair and just wage… the capitalist system has created a war between the classes. The losers of this war have been the working class… the modern class structure being based largely on one’s economic prowess… The spoils of this parasitical elite class will be seized and redistributed to the people.” - Andrew Anglin, 2013, from the blog, Total Fascism

Introduction

A website commentator/poster, by the name Jamie Clayton, once told me why he was such a fan of National Socialism. He wrote:

“Under the national socialist government there was 100% employment, big business was not allowed to profit at the expense of small and the poor were valued as much as the rich...”

This is almost word for word what countless Communists/Leftists have said about Stalin's regime as well about various other Leftist states. In fact Seumas Milne, the assistant editor of the Guardian, still often waxes lyrically about how the Soviet Union (in Jamie Clayton's words) “created100% employment” and made sure that “big business was not allowed to profit at the expense of small” and that “the poor were valued as much as the rich”. Or, in Seumas Milne's own words, the Soviet Union

“delivered rapid industrialisation, mass education, job security and huge advances in social and gender equality. It encompassed genuine idealism and commitment...”

The issues Seumas Milne doesn't address (except to downplay or deny them) are those of the totalitarianism, the complete annihilation of democracy, the many labour and death camps, the omnipresence and abuses of the KGB, the class and race 'liquidations', the war economies, the Soviet Union's imperialist empire, the deadly uniformity, etc1. But who cares about all that if you have “100% employment”, “social justice” and “class equality”? 

 

Marxist Accounts of National Socialism

There have been literally hundreds of Marxist accounts of the nature of fascism and Nazism; as well as of the rise of the Nazis and fascists in the 1920s and 30s. (Many accounts have been Marxist even though the writers and analysts didn't necessarily see their accounts as being so.)

All of these accounts basically claim that Hitler’s and Mussolini’s socialist credentials were completely baseless.

That's strange. Mussolini started out life as a literal or explicit socialist. He spent at least twelve years of his life as a socialist activist and many of the ideas and values of socialism stayed with him throughout the rest of his life. Hitler, On the other hand, is said to have adopted socialist ideas and policies simply to serve his racial nationalism. (Why couldn't he have been both a racial nationalist and a socialist? More of which later.)

Leftists/Marxists also glibly claim that that the Nazis and fascists didn’t genuinely believe in “the common ownership of the means of production”. Perhaps not. However, not a single socialist or Communist regime in the 20th century put the means of production in the workers’ hands either. The Communist parties/states put the means of production into their own hands - even if “on behalf of the workers”. Not only that. Many socialists and Communists said this this would happen well before they gained state power. So, in the end, the means of production, in the 20^th century, were never in the hands of the workers in any country or at any time. (But, of course, come the next Leftist revolution, everything will be so much better.. and if not then, perhaps the time after that.) Consequently, from a socialist/Communist perspective, singling out the Nazis and fascists for being guilty on this count is a little rich.

As I said, many – though not all – Leftists/Marxists claim that from the very start (i.e., circa 1920), Hitler simply used socialism for his own ends. Nonetheless, Professor Rick Wilford (who otherwise faithfully adheres to the Marxist version of events) does at least deign to cite the Nazi’s socialist ‘Twenty-Five Point programme’ of 1920:

“The ‘Twenty-Five Point Programme’ of the Nationalist Socialist German Workers Party published in 1920 included such ostensibly impeccable socialist goals as the nationalisation of large corporations, the abolition of unearned income, the confiscation of war profits and the prohibition of land speculation. But the commitment to such an agenda wore increasingly thin, albeit, albeit that Hitler was keenly aware of the need to counteract the growth of support among workers for socialism…” (page 200)

On the other hand, some Marxists have vaguely - or quietly - admitted that Hitler was indeed a socialist - of some kind - in the very early days. Nonetheless, they too claim that by the late 1920s Hitler had completely given up on socialism. 

 

Another Marxist/Leftist claim is that Hitler “was keenly aware of the need to counteract the growth of support among the workers for socialism”. This completely overlooks or discounts the possible fusion of socialism and nationalism. That's also odd if you consider the rather obvious fact that Hitler was a National Socialist.

Specifically, Marxists/Leftists discount two things. Firstly, they discount Hitler’s fusion of national and socialism. Secondly, they also discount the possibility that German workers (especially if socialist) would - or could - have quite happily accepted Hitler’s fusion of socialism and nationalism. It’s as if Leftists/Marxists simply take it for granted that nationalism and socialism could never have been fused and therefore that the German workers would never have been truly committed to Hitler. Yet why couldn’t nationalism and socialism have been fused? Do Marxists think it is a conceptual or even a logical impossibility? Surely not! And why couldn’t millions of German workers have happily accepted that fusion of nationalism and socialism?

Again, Leftists/Marxists reject even the very possibility of any fusion of nationalism and socialism. That mindless assumption, or Marxist diktat, is of course believed - or simply just propagated - to distance all (international) socialists from Hitler’s (national) socialists.

Another claim is that Hitler never had the mass support of the German workers anyway. Professor Wilford writes that

“[b]y the later 1920s the relative failure of the Nazi Party to secure mass support among the working class led them to re-orientate their appeal to capitalists, small businessmen, farmers and white-collar workers.”

Some historians have argued that the Nazis did, in fact, have the mass support of the workers by the late 1920s. But it all depends on what exactly 'mass support’ means (in terms of exact numbers). If Leftists mean that Hitler never had the support of – literally! - all the German working class; then Hitler simply wouldn't have needed that level of support to secure political victory. In fact in all kinds of democracy no party has ever needed or received such mass support in order to secure power. (England's Trotskyist SWP usually has a annual turn-over of around 1500 members2.)

Another well-known Marxist commonplace is that Hitler turned his back on the workers and then embraced the ‘capitalists’ instead (in the late 1920s and early 1930s). Apart from this not be true on many historical and political accounts, Leftists imply that Hitler wouldn’t have welcomed the support of capitalists, small businessmen, farmers and white-collar workers in the early 1920s. That simply isn’t true either. Hitler was always a national socialist. If that were not the case, he would have simply been a socialist in the early days. But he was never a revolutionary socialist - who believed in class war - and no one has ever claimed that he was3. The whole point of National Socialism, even in the early 1920s, was that it was against class conflict. It wanted to unite the classes on behalf on the nation and the German race. And there are many quotes from both Hitler and the Nazis generally which explicitly state that the uniting of the classes, although still within an explicitly socialist context, was a primary goal of National Socialism. (The Marxist “abolition of all classes” is another version of this same Nazi idea – the unification of all classes under the aegis of the centralised state.)

So if it were the case - as on the classic Marxist account - of Hitler and the National Socialists stringing the German working class along, and then jettisoning them because of “the relative failure of the Nazi Party to secure mass support among them”, then all that doesn’t make much sense. In other words, the Nazis actually embraced 'capitalists’/business from the beginning – or at least Hitler and the ‘Right socialists’ did. Many capitalists, despite the Marxist fairy tale, didn’t return that favour until, in actual fact, after Hitler was elected in 1933 - or at the very least immediately before. And all this despite the fact that in the Marxist version, the Nazis secured important capitalist support in the late 1920s and onwards. This is not to say that some capitalists didn’t support the Nazis before 1933 – of course they did! Nevertheless, the Marxist version has it that the capitalists on their own or exclusively helped Hitler gain power. On many other non-Marxist accounts, on the other hand, most capitalists (though it depends on which type of capitalist we are talking about) jumped ship to the Nazis just before or after the Nazis were elected (as capitalists or businessmen often do when a new party gains power).

Finally, Hitler's 25-point plan sums up Hitler's socialist credentials well and very explicitly. This plan is virtually indistinguishable from what, for example, the SWP/Counterfire/Respect - and many other Leftist groups - have offered over the years. However, since the plan was written in the early 1920s, it will obviously sound a little antiquated in certain respects.

Despite it various archaic phrases and policies, Hitler's socialist plan for Germany graphically demonstrates one of the biggest political lies or deceits of the 20th century: that the National Socialists (Nazis) were the literal opposites of the International Socialists (i.e., Communists, progressives, Trotskyists, etc.). Not surprisingly Leftists (Seumas Milne is, again, a very good example of this) will want to keep this dirty little family secret hidden from the public at large. Indeed numerous Leftists over the years have come up with all sorts of neat little gimmicks and deceits to play down the socialist realities and credentials of the Nazi Party and of Adolph Hitler himself. (But what hell else would you expect?) 

 

Why Both International Socialism & National Socialism are Totalitarian

Historically, Leftists have always claimed that “equating Stalin’s Russia with Nazi German and fascist Italy was a powerful way of demonising the communist threat to liberal democracy” (Wilford, pg. 213). Or, to quote Seumas Milne again, such “fashionable attempt[s] to equate communism and Nazism [are] moral and historical nonsense”.

Not only that. Leftists don't like the fact that the term ‘totalitarianism’ is “employed in a cavalier fashion” when applied to Communist/socialist regimes – any Communist/socialist regimes! It seems that the charge of totalitarianism cannot - by definition! - be applied to any Communist/socialist regime. Predictably, this simply means that only the Nazi and fascist regimes of the twentieth century were truly totalitarian. (Well well, who'd have thought anything else, eh?)

There are, of course, differences between Nazism and Communism/socialism. And Marxists/Leftists have fixated on these tiny difference as a means to distance Communist/Marxist totalitarianism from Nazi/fascist totalitarianism. Nonetheless, these difference can’t - and simply don’t - mean that 20^th century Communist/socialist regimes weren't totalitarian. For example, there are differences between democratic parliamentary parties: that doesn’t stop all of them being committed to parliamentary democracy. There were differences - some quite substantial! - between Italian fascism and German Nazism: that has never stopped Marxists/Leftists from lumping them together.

Yes, Marxists/Leftists do indeed have their own quaint, insubstantial and unimportant differences in mind when they claim that no Communist/socialist regime - and even Stalin’s Soviet Union! - was ever totalitarian. Nonetheless, they are differences that don't make a difference when it comes to the issue of totaliterianism.

And so despite all the above, National Socialists are almost the exact counterparts of International Socialists. The following are just some of the many things which Leftists and Nazis believe and share:

i) A hatred of capitalism, (what they usually call “capitalist”) democracy and America.

ii) The glorification - or fetishisation - of (Nazi/Leftist) state and street violence; all often in conjunction with the same - sometimes tacit – political hard-man's mantra: “By any means necessary.”

iii) Black-and-white (or Manichean) world-views and all the conspiracy theories (often the same ones!) which go along with them.

iv) The promise full employment, selfless leaders, complete class equality and, of course, the annihilation of the Jews (or 'Zionists' in the case of Leftists 4).

That's why Leftists and Nazis need each other. They reflect each other and are fighting over the same political bones.

These two groups of socialists, both national and international, have sustained themselves on these largely unreal ideological oppositions. (Their mutual fight for political power, on the other hand, has always been very real.) Nazis would be nothing without the Marxists/Communists and vice versa. They feed off each other and would die if the other died. And that's mainly why the Inter-Nazis class everyone on the outside of their own little gang/sect as 'Nazis'; and it's equally why Nazis class everyone on the outside of their own little gang/sect as 'Marxists'/'Communists'.

After 90 or so years, this cartoon battle between the Reds and the Blacks has become very boring and entirely predictable. It's a pseudo-fight of supposedly “opposing ideologies” which simply disguises the fact that the Reds and Blacks are in fact estranged brothers fighting, ultimately, for the same end – complete state power. And in order to bring that state power nearer, they promise us virtually the very same economic and social prizes for our support.

Why National Socialists aren't Patriots

“There you go again spouting you anti-nazi rhetoric! You should join Hope not Hate my leftist friend and stop playing at Nationalist politics.... a liberal piece of shit like you. Your lack of understanding of racial and ethnic dynamics is frightening. You are not part of the solution but part of the problem... what else would I expect of a liberal pretending to be a nationalist.” - Athelstan

Of course the massive differences between patriotism and National Socialism are conveniently ignored by International Socialists (as well as by Nazis when they need to spread their word to patriots who aren't Nazis). It's very convenient for them to be able to fuse patriotism with Nazism - all the better to destroy them both. However, the terrible fact is that International Socialists share far more with National Socialists than patriots do! This shouldn't be at all surprise if you consider the fact that the two groups are both totalitarian and socialist.

For a start, state-worship is not the same as patriotism.

English National Socialists will of course say that they too are against the state. However, National Socialists aren’t against the state in the abstract. National Socialists are against the current state or government. Why? Because it’s not a National Socialist state.

If it were a National Socialist state, Nazis would worship it; which, historically, Nazis have always done. Indeed because Nation Socialism is essentially about the worship of the National Socialist state, Nazis wouldn’t think twice about annihilating patriots (such as us “liberal nationalists”) who didn’t worship that state. They'd also annihilate all the patriots who didn't do or think the things that the Nazi state/party required of them.

Patriots, on the other hand, aren’t necessarily against the state or government; they just don’t confuse love of the state/government with love of the people and their traditions, cultures and values.

This Nazi inability to distinguish states and peoples is shown in the virulent anti-Americanism which has always been rife in Nazi movements (as it has also been in Leftist and Islamist movements). I quoted Jamie Clayton early on and here again he shows his Nazi credentials with his position on America as well as his position on Israel (i.e., the Jews):

“Does America sympathise with the Palestinians? Or does it despite its supposed hatred of tyranny side with the occupier rather than the occupied?”

And elsewhere he writes:

“America is a bully and there is nothing more satisfying than watching a bully being beaten and humiliated by those they have spend years tormenting.”

What you have here is that because Nazis associate the people with the state, this person is failing to distinguish Americans from what various American states/governments have done. To a Nazi, the state must embody the people (or race) rather than simply be its servant. That's why you get this mindless anti-Americanism from Nazis (which goes all the way back to Hitler).

This is not to say that all American patriots will be against the state/government no matter what it does. It depends. Some American patriots, for example, are complete isolationists when it comes to foreign policy (or interventions) and some aren't. Nazis, on the other hand, are totally committed to whatever the Nazi state does and totally against whatever any non-Nazi/fascist state does (e.g., America, the UK and Israel).

And just as you can hardly expect any self-respecting Nazi to have good things to say about a capitalist democracy like America and its people (save all American Nazis), so you can't expect a Nazi to support a historical leader who helped defeat the Nazis – Winston Churchill. Hence Jamie Clayton believes that Churchill “betrayed Britain”. And if it were up to him, “his remains would go in the same skip Jimmy Saviles grave ended up in”. Or, to put it the way Mark Pringle put it: “You [people] are always going on about Churchill.”

It's also blindingly obvious that no Nazi will have any time for a constitutional monarchy, such as we have here in the UK. Despite his embarrassingly naivete about how much actual power the Queen has, and how little power the monarchy has had ('the royal prerogative' was last used, in Parliamentary terms, in 1835) in the last two hundred years or so, Clayton still feels the need to tell us that

“although we are a democracy, we could easily be like Saudi Arabia if we wanted as the Queen allows us a democracy that is in no way compulsory.”

In addition to all that, you will have no doubt often heard National Socialists (along with Leftists) talking about the government/state “censoring views”, “limiting freedom of speech”, and “silencing certain opinions”. When they do so, they're exclusively talking about their own views, their own freedom of speech and their own opinions. Thus Nazis (as well as Leftists) hate the government/state not for its hatred of free speech in the abstract - but for its hatred of National Socialist free speech. If the National Socialists (or Leftists) gained power, they would censor views, limit free speech, etc. on a scale that would even make our present Government seem libertarian – as history has shown.

Finally, what I have never understood is why an English patriot would be so keen on German National Socialism and the way the Nazis did things in the first place. The English have their own ways of doing things. The German National Socialists - who were of a specific historical period (1921-1945) - had their own very German way of doing things. So what’s so English about German National Socialism? Why do English Nazis want to mimic German Nazis who only had political power for 12 years (a shorter period than Tony Blair's New Labour)?

The English hate Nazism and there is no English version of Nazism (or of totalitarianism). Previous English versions of Nazism were utterly indebted to foreign models: from Oswald Mosley's Italian fascism to the obsessions with German Nazism of the British National Socialist Movement (BNSM), Combat 18, etc.

I would say that at any one time, there are 1000 active Nazis in the UK, probably less. (In other words, probably less or equal to the entire membership of the SWP.) So it doesn’t matter how many juvenile and ultra-hard Nazi websites there are, or even how active some hard-core Nazis are on other people's websites or in other movements, the British are highly unlikely to buy into fascism in the near future. It’s not in our nature. However, yes, come a severe enough crisis, then people, in large numbers, may well do so. But having said that, they are just as likely to adopt revolutionary Marxism or even Islamism in such a crisis. Sometimes it doesn't really matter - to the politically and socially desperate - what extreme remedy people adopt; especially if they're being deceitfully offered an unspoken utopia by Leftists/Nazis/Islamists.

Just as Hitler's Nazis hated the English and their traditions, so too do contemporary English Nazis (as do, of course, Trotskyists/progressives and communists). But primarily they hate English democracy. They hate it because it won't do exactly what they want it to do. And as a result of the inevitable failures (some real, some bogus) of all democracies - including our own, Nazis (as well as Leftists) must believe that all us non-Nazis suffer from “false consciousness”. You see, both Nazis and Leftists believe that because the platonic Media has such a complete control of all our gullible minds and souls, then the only way we could possibly escape from its omnipresent lies would be to embrace Nazism/Leftism and thus, in the process, free ourselves from our false (i.e., non-Nazi/non-Leftist) consciousness.

The 'media', et al explain – if only to them - why the majority of English people simply won't buy their totalitarian package-deals.

The fact is that the English, on the whole, simply love their freedom too much. Consequently, the promise or bribe of “100% employment” - and all those other visionary prizes (even if achievable) Leftists and Nazis offer us - simply won't sway the deal.

                             ************************************************

Notes:

1 In the article from which that quote is taken, Seumas Milne underplays the body-count of Stalin's regime of “genuine idealism and commitment”. In contrast, he accuses 'Nazis' and the Right of over-exaggerating it. In other words, Milne is quite happy to be the Communist – if one who's now committed to the Labour Party (for reasons of realpolitik) – in this predicable 90-year-old Nazi-Communist dance.

2 For every 100 new students the SWP recruits, another 100 (ex)students leave. Most of those ex-students who do stay usually do so because they have some position of power – however small - within the party. Alternatively, they will have gained positions in academia, the rights and race industries, etc. from where they can advance and propagate SWP/Trotskyist positions and policies.

3 Hitler was a revolutionary in many ways. The term 'non-revolutionary' is meant in the specific sense of Hitler not being a Marxist revolutionary. That is, a believer in violently taking power from the state ('capitalists') and in instigating a class war.

Hitler was revolutionary from the start. He hated the 'Old Order' all along; and not only because of the "Versailles betrayal". However, he was wise enough, at least after the Munich Putsch (just like Antonio Gramsci ), to realise that the Marxist route of violent revolution - which had had no success in Europe at the time or before - would probably have no success in Germany in the future either. Hence Hitler used the Muslim Brotherhood/Communist/Trotskyist route of using democracy in order to destroy democracy.

Many other revolutionaries have of course also given up on the total and immediate (violent) revolution. They realised that it was basically a no-hoper. Take Seumas Milne again. He was a Communist - a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) - until he too finally realised that a communist total and violent revolution was not on the books. Consequently he switched his support to the British Labour Party. It must have become clear to him – as it is has to many - that the Labour Party (or at least parts of its) could do far more damage to the “reactionary” and “bigoted” British - and even to British capitalism - than some fringe Leftist party like the CPGB or the SWP. In that sense, he realised what Gramsci had realised some sixty years or so years before: that Leftists must “take over the institutions” instead of endlessly relying on the 'Sorelian myth' of the Revolution.

4 English Nazis, on the whole, only started using the word 'Zionist' - instead of 'Jew' - around ten to fifteen years ago; though its does go back to Hitler. It was something passed onto the German Nazis by their Muslim friends – such as the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and the many other Nazi-Islamists in the Arab world in the 1930s and 1940s.