• This is a political forum that is non-biased/non-partisan and treats every person's position on topics equally. This debate forum is not aligned to any political party. In today's politics, many ideas are split between and even within all the political parties. Often we find ourselves agreeing on one platform but some topics break our mold. We are here to discuss them in a civil political debate. If this is your first visit to our political forums, be sure to check out the RULES. Registering for debate politics is necessary before posting. Register today to participate - it's free!

Were the Nazis Right or Left Wing?

Were the Nazis...

  • Predominantly Right Wing

    Votes: 66 51.2%

  • Predominantly Left Wing

    Votes: 27 20.9%

  • Largely in the center

    Votes: 10 7.8%

  • Don't know/unsure/no opinion/none of the above

    Votes: 26 20.2%
  • Total voters
    129
Khayembii Communique said:
Ah okay so then you're not actually discussing Nazism or Communism and whether or not they're left right but rather the USSR and Nazi Germany thanks for clarifying.
Click to expand...

Where did you get that idea? Of course, Nazi Germany was the only Nazi state and the Soviet Union was the largest and most powerful communist country in existence. It's not surprising that these two countries would get the most attention in a debate regarding the political spectrum origins of Nazism. But the argument does not have to be exclusive to these two governments. I'm willing to examine other states, at your convenience.
 
rathi said:
As a libertarian you should understand the concept of private property. In Nazi Germany, the government worked in concert with private owners of industry. In the USSR, private owners don't exist and everything is under the control of the government. That single difference is so large that corporatism is much closer to capitalism by comparison. As an example, the U.S. moved from a capitalist to a corporatist system and back in order to produce munitions to fight WW2. A corporatist system has governments awarding contracts to corporations to produce goods, a communist government owns all land and factories and tells them what to make.
Click to expand...

You obviously haven't studied the economy of Nazi Germany. It is well noted that Nazi Germany did not publicly eliminate private industires, but that is not the same thing as saying Nazi Germany awarded contracts to corporations to produce goods. The government of Nazi Germany told the businesses what to produce, how to produce it, when to produce it, who to employ, and how to operate. Again, this goes back to symbolism. Germany also eliminated the labor unions while the Soviets turned labor unions into a branch of the government commissary. Both essentially controlled businesses and labor unions to the very core.

And by the way, the United States is still arguably running a corporatist economy. It's not as bad as Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union, but it's still too corporatist for my taste.
 
Khayembii Communique said:
You have to understand libertarian reasoning in order to understand Elijah's position. Private property to them cannot exist outside of a free market, which is the real lynch pin to them. Once the state interferes in the free market to give one organization benefit over the other, or some such thing, then the free market ceases to be. The left/right spectrum to them is defined on state intervention, not the role or status of private property. Based on that, both Nazism (which I interpret as fascism) and Communism are "left wing" because they both require large amounts of state intervention, regardless of what the role/structure of the state itself is or who the system serves.
Click to expand...

Then perhaps you may be able to enlighten me. Explain how libertarins don't see the role or status of private property in a spectrum that examines state interventionism? If the state intervenes to control all private property, then private property no longer exists in a state that has nationalized its land. Property rights are very dear to the free-market and are the cornerstone of a free society. Your statement is basically a highly inaccurate generalization of Libertarians, as a group, and has no merit in this debate.
 
Captain Courtesy said:
In bold. Actually, yes it does. You cannot have a communist society where there is any sort of power structure. It is a stateless society. That's what defines it. There has never been a true communist society. Your example of Catholicism doesn't apply. There is not one clear definition of that belief system, firstly. Secondly, the actions of members of that religion do not define that religion. In a society, if you have a "state" it is not communist. Sorry.
Click to expand...

First of all, I understand your historical note and that is why I brought up Lenin. According to the purist definition lifted from the manifesto, communism is essentially a state-less society. I'm willing to agree with one single caveat. Socialism, on the other hand, was and is considered the transitional period from a capitalist to a communist society. The socialism state does exist in such forms as the Soviet Union, various states throughout the developing world, and even milder forms such as various Western European states. The states that had leaders who advocated for plans to achieve a communist society materialized with the most cruelest of states. So, if you really want to get technical, we could continue this discussion by simply substituting 'socialism' for 'communism.'



No it didn't because it continued to meet the goals that he identified.
Click to expand...

What about Heinrich Himmler? I've actually spoken to real life neo-Nazis who vehemently hate Himmler because of his treason to the German people. Does that disqualify Himmler from being a "true" Nazi, if at the end of his life, he turned his back on the Germans in the hopes of a gentler punishment? I don't think so. He's still a Nazi and Lenin is still a "socialist."
 
So I'm feeling the whole "Nazis are leftwing" is some sortof new development in the political thought of the right in the last decade or so during resurgence? Because I really never encountered the idea in my life until recently, frankly, during Obama. I don't really know.
 
SE102 said:
So I'm feeling the whole "Nazis are leftwing" is some sortof new development in the political thought of the right in the last decade or so during resurgence? Because I really never encountered the idea in my life until recently, frankly, during Obama. I don't really know.
Click to expand...

You still haven't moved beyond the left-right spectrum.
 
No I've been out of the one dimensional paradigm for the better part of a decade, I go down there to talk to ya'll sometimes.
 
CaptainCourtesy said:
You are incorrect. There has never been a communist government/society. The all are, ultimately fascist dictatorships. A TRUE communist society would never operate in the way we have seen.
Click to expand...

You really believe that?

If every significant attempt to incorporate on a large scale, communism, results in authoritarian/dictatorships that become poster children for terrible human rights abuses, and terrible economies, all of which fail, or creep out of darkness by shedding some of their ill-fated designs, at what point in the repeated experiment with identical results do you accept it? I mean, the old line about insanity is doing the same thing but expecting different results applies here.

Think of communism as a computer program with certain givens and parameters. It's lovingly designed, it's mathematically precise, and fantastic. Naive college kids from around the world fall in love with its elegance.

When we run that program in a human system, it always gives the same, tragic, predictable output. You want to suggest we've never "run the communism program"??
We run facism, we get the same, predictable output.

From the perspective of power/freedom, it is so exactly like facism, that it's the same program with a string substitution for "nation" -> "people"
Oh it's for the nation, oh it's for the people. Meanwhile it's the same authoritarian regime attempting to control the political and economic liberties of the state, comitting terrible atrocities in the name of "nation/people", falling way behind the rest of the world, etc.

And why take up the left/right argument? It doesn't communicate any information.
 
You obviously haven't studied the economy of Nazi Germany. It is well noted that Nazi Germany did not publicly eliminate private industires, but that is not the same thing as saying Nazi Germany awarded contracts to corporations to produce goods. The government of Nazi Germany told the businesses what to produce, how to produce it, when to produce it, who to employ, and how to operate. Again, this goes back to symbolism. Germany also eliminated the labor unions while the Soviets turned labor unions into a branch of the government commissary. Both essentially controlled businesses and labor unions to the very core.
Click to expand...

You are ignoring the glaring difference between making a deal with private owners and the state owning everything. Nazi policy was to give private owners tax breaks, legalized monopolies and squelch labor problems in return for political support and military buildup. Soviet policy was to send private owners to a re-education camp and grab their assets. In Germany a factory owner could make a profit if he played ball with the Nazi's. By 1933, factory owners didn't even exist in the USSR. There is a vast gulf between a mutually beneficial alliance versus obliteration and looting.
 
I think that there is some confusion over the term "corporatism." You don't actually need corporations for corporatism to exist. You can replace it with labor unions, bureaucrats, or any other interest groups. That's all corporatism is, the institutionalization of special interest groups into the government.
 
rathi said:
You are ignoring the glaring difference between making a deal with private owners and the state owning everything. Nazi policy was to give private owners tax breaks, legalized monopolies and squelch labor problems in return for political support and military buildup. Soviet policy was to send private owners to a re-education camp and grab their assets. In Germany a factory owner could make a profit if he played ball with the Nazi's. By 1933, factory owners didn't even exist in the USSR. There is a vast gulf between a mutually beneficial alliance versus obliteration and looting.
Click to expand...

And you don't the people placed in charge of the newly acquired industries by the Soviet Union made a profit?
 
And you don't the people placed in charge of the newly acquired industries by the Soviet Union made a profit?
Click to expand...

Nope. They administrated the factory, but they did not receive a cut of what the factory produced.
 
SirPwn4lot said:
Were the Nazi Party of Germany a right wing or left wing establishment?

I figure this is a better place to discuss than on someone else's thread like we were :)

Opinions?
Click to expand...

Most liberals/leftists/socialists/communists want to associate it with the right or call it corporatism. I'm not buying it. If you put these types of governments on a continuum from classical liberalism (we now call it conservatism) and it's emphasis on limited government and a maximum amount of individual liberaties to communism and it's emphasis on a strong, powerful central government that intrudes regularly with it's population. National socializm is far closer to communism in that they relied on a strong powerful central government and minimal liberties for it's citizens. In most respects it would seem closer to todays european socialist democracies in that they both allow corporations to exist. In point of fact communist china also now seems to be following this paradigm. Interesting.
 
Last edited:
Dutch said:
If you put these types of governments on a continuum from classical liberalism (we now call it conservatism) and it's emphasis on limited government and a maximum amount of individual liberaties to communism and it's emphasis on a strong, powerful central government that intrudes regularly with it's population.
Click to expand...

Thank you for validating what I wrote earlier. It's funny because communism doesn't have a government at all, much less a "strong, powerful central" one.
 
rathi said:
Nope. They administrated the factory, but they did not receive a cut of what the factory produced.
Click to expand...

And where did you learn that? Is that your guess or do you really know for sure? It's hard to imagine a bureaucrat anywhere who didn't make a profit from the industry he controlled.
 
rathi said:
Nope. They administrated the factory, but they did not receive a cut of what the factory produced.
Click to expand...

Also, as DrunkenAsparagus mentioned, I think it matters very little. In one sense, the bureaucrats are directly controlling the business and there is no middle-man. In the other world, the bureaucrats are directly controlling the entrepreneurs and allowing them to remain in position for various reasons (public appeal, delegation of duties, etc.) In both scenarios, the business (or corporation) is controlled by the state. And you can't argue that corporations did not exist because it would be definitively incorrect based on any given meaning of corporatism.
 
And where did you learn that? Is that your guess or do you really know for sure? It's hard to imagine a bureaucrat anywhere who didn't make a profit from the industry he controlled.
Click to expand...

If you wanted wealth and power in the Soviet system, you climbed the ranks of the political structure. Operating a factory mostly meant being forced to jump through all kinds of hoops in order to meet the demands of the planning committee. The true power of the soviet system was in divorcing the concept of wealth through ownership. Administration had certain perks, but they came from the party not the factory.
 
Also, as DrunkenAsparagus mentioned, I think it matters very little. In one sense, the bureaucrats are directly controlling the business and there is no middle-man. In the other world, the bureaucrats are directly controlling the entrepreneurs and allowing them to remain in position for various reasons (public appeal, delegation of duties, etc.) In both scenarios, the business (or corporation) is controlled by the state.
Click to expand...

That isn't how the Fascist system worked. Most industrialists willingly participated in fascist economics because they personally gained immense wealth (at the war went badly). The government gave them profitable monopolies in return for going along with then national agenda. In Italy, Mussolini was striped of power when his war made the arrangement no longer profitable. Hitler also allowed considerable autonomy until the war became desperate in '44.

And you can't argue that corporations did not exist because it would be definitively incorrect based on any given meaning of corporatism.
Click to expand...

The USSR was not corporatist. The best descriptor would be a planned economy, as economic output was determined by a central committee giving orders to state owned factories.
 
ElijahGalt said:
And where did you learn that? Is that your guess or do you really know for sure? It's hard to imagine a bureaucrat anywhere who didn't make a profit from the industry he controlled.
Click to expand...

Reality is not limited to the extent of your imagination.
 
DrunkenAsparagus said:
I think that there is some confusion over the term "corporatism." You don't actually need corporations for corporatism to exist. You can replace it with labor unions, bureaucrats, or any other interest groups. That's all corporatism is, the institutionalization of special interest groups into the government.
Click to expand...

bingo. unions, in fact, are inherently corporatist.
 
SE102 said:
So I'm feeling the whole "Nazis are leftwing" is some sortof new development in the political thought of the right in the last decade or so during resurgence? Because I really never encountered the idea in my life until recently, frankly, during Obama. I don't really know.
Click to expand...

nope.


The Road To Serfdom: 1943

...Hayek challenged the general view among British academics that fascism was a capitalist reaction against socialism, instead arguing that fascism and socialism had common roots in central economic planning and the power of the state over the individual...
Click to expand...
 
Last edited:
CriticalThought said:
Women's rights and same sex marriage come to mind.
Click to expand...

interesting claim, that lack of support for 'social equality' = conservativism.


you realize (among others) this would force you to argue that Cuba under Castro is a conservative enterprise..... ?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom