Comments by "Regis" (@Timbo5000) on "The REAL Reason why Hitler HAD to start WW2" video.
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@LibertarianLeninistRants What you seem to be doing here is redefining socialism in such a way that any socialist state that ever existed doesn't even fall under that definition.
There is no democratic control by the workers over the means of production in any socialist system. It has always been the dictatorial central government, in the form of a communist party, setting up a planned economy. Furthermore, there always will be classes and hierarchy, you can only stop them from exploiting one another, as socialism attempts to do. In socialist states, you still had government officials contributing to the planned economy, you still had factory managers, you still had workers. And the former got paid more than the latter for their work. In that sense you still had upper and lower classes. The difference is that the upper class using their property of the means of production to exploit the working class and live off others' work was not possible under socialism; the classes worked together for a common goal and the means of production was collectively owned. You got paid for your actual work, not merely for owning the means of production. The manager still got paid more than the worker for his work.
Comparing that to National Socialism, you see striking similarities. Hitler hated the exploitation by corporations under capitalism, yet he also hated the universalist/egalitarian aspects of traditional socialism. National Socialism creates a system in which a dictatorial government, the NSDAP, creates a planned economy which takes control of the means of production to ensure they are used to the benefit of the German race (claiming this must be an economical category like the workers class seems arbitrary to me: the point of socialism is to stop the class struggle by having everyone work for a common goal). Farmers and factories get paid a fixed price for what they produce, exactly like under socialism. Managers and workers alike work for a common goal instead of exploiting one another in a class struggle, just like under socialism. The only difference in this regard might be the relationship between the factory "owners" and the workers. I'm unsure whether the wages in NS Germany were also fixed, in which case there would de facto again be no difference between traditional socialism and National Socialism, but if the factory managers (who were often government officials taking the place of the actual owner, but let's ignore that) could themselves decide the wages of the workers and how much they themselves would get, that'd be a clear difference.
NS may seem like capitalism on the surface, but it really wasn't. Under traditional socialism the means of production would be nationalised, while under NS private property was still allowed. However, the owners of a factory were bound by the planned economy and were dictated how to use the means of production they owned. In practice, instead of outright taking control of factories themselves, the government simply "outsourced" their management, if you will (and a lot of the time even sent actual government officials to manage factories that were de jure still owned by private entities). The outcome is the same: government control of the means of production and prevention of class exploitation. The main difference between NS and traditional socialism is who takes control of the means of production (workers class vs a race or nation in fascism) and how the planned economy is organised (but to the same result). So yes there are some significant differences between the two systems, but mainly theoretical differences laid in the attitude towards nations and races. So I don't see why NS could not be called its own separate version of socialism.
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@LibertarianLeninistRants
1. Regarding class and exploitation: what we say is the same. I wanted to say that class exploitation in capitalism is laid in the fact that the upper class not only manages the working class, but also owns the means of production. It's the owning of the means of production that causes class exploitation and solving this problem is the core of socialism. What you described here is exactly what I meant with the upper class being able to live off others' work if they were allowed to own the means of production, we absolutely agree on that. What I tried to say is that there is no such thing as a classless society. There will always be a hierarchy between more skilled/intelligent people that will occupy higher positions with more power (the upper class) and regular workers. And you might call the top members of the communist party the elite. What socialism does is in practice not abolish classes altogether, but to stop them from exploiting eachother. That was my point.
The common goal is to organise an economy that serves the greater good of society, instead of merely a certain class or an elite. For National Socialism this was the same, but instead of all of society, they organised the economy only to serve the German race (which they eventually wanted to be the whole society anyway, by removing other races).
2. Regarding class collaboration/struggle, thank you for pointing out the difference. I was describing the practical reality in socialist states instead of their theoretical ambitions. And I think I see why the practice didn't correspond with the theoretical background: as I said before, a classless society is not possible in an developed and organised society (it would be in f.e. an anarchy or communist society, but not in a socialist state). If you have a government guiding the economy and if you have factories that need leadership to properly function, you have an upper and lower class. Hierarchies are not social constructs, they are facts of nature. You have more skilled/intelligent people and less skilled/intelligent people. The former will be placed in more important government positions and will be put at the helm of a factory with workers under him/her. The latter will be the workers. The former will always wield more power and have more influence than the latter. It is an inevitable matter of fact that you will always retain a certain degree of class distinctions.
But practice aside and into the theoretical sphere, I think you pointed out one of the main differences between traditional socialism and NS/fascism. Whereas socialism seeks to create a classless society and rejects the idea of a social hierarchy, NS/fascism embraces the hierarchy and sees it as a central element of what makes for an effectively organised society. Or as I said earlier, Hitler hated the exploitative elements of capitalism (same as socialism), but he also hated the egalitarian elements of socialism. This may have been a more important statement than I initially thought. In theory, socialists want to move towards a fully classless egalitarian society, while NS/fascists absolutely do not.
Regarding the difference between the working class and race, de facto they lead to the same situation: the economy is reorganised to serve the "common man" instead of a particular class and exploitation is stopped (and this reorganisation is done largely in the same way to boot). But I do agree that the theoretical element is significantly different. That again ties into the aforementioned class collaboration vs classlessness.
3. for the sake of brevity I will briefly respond to point 2 and 3 made here.
Regarding point 2, my argument is that socialism has as a goal to enter into a classless society where there is no exploitation and the economy is organised in such a way to benefit the whole of society more or less equally and fairly. NS/fascism is the same, except you switch classlessness out for class collaboration and the whole of society is either a race (NS) or the whole of a nation (fascism). Therefore I'd say the three are very closely related, albeit also fundamentally different in other ways.
Regarding point 3, there never was any democratic element to any socialist state to date, as far as I know. Workers never had direct say in their wages and whatnot, it was always a central government communist party doing what it saw as fair for everyone, without actual democratic legitimacy. Actual socialist states were like that and so was National Socialism.
To conclude, I think we see two systems that are remarkably similar in many ways, but fundamentally differ particularly in the area of egalitarianism vs hierarchies. I can see why some people call both socialism, but at the same time I can see why others say they're just different enough to warrant separating them altogether. For me it's a grey area at this point.
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We aren't really becoming poorer as a whole, but the anti-globalisation narratives do have certain truths in them. Globalisation is definitely no zero-sum game and both the west and east massively benefit from it if you look at the large scale. We get huge markets to trade with, they get an opportunity to grow their economy by manufacturing things for us and later industrialising to our level. It's a win-win.
But there are some side effects. We in the west lose our factory jobs en masse. We get other jobs in return, but those are mostly skilled jobs in cities. Globalisation is as a consequence draining our countryside from jobs and making the lower classes even poorer than they already were, even though the country as a whole becomes richer. This is the reason the yellow vests protest in France and the reason the countryside voted Trump in the US. We ignore and neglect the lower classes in favour of economic growth. Another consequence is that our larger companies become more and more global entities instead of linked to a country and become powerful enough to dictate countries' policies. If, for example, one country creates strict environmental laws or chooses to tax pollution or something, the local companies can simply threaten with leaving that country for another one without such laws. If those companies leave, that country may lose out on massive amounts of GDP and jobs. So it all becomes a fight of who can appease the corporations the best. Who has the best settling climate? Who has the lowest taxes? Who allows for loopholes in the law to escape taxing altogether? Who has lenient laws in terms of workers rights or environmental laws? What is actually good for society matters less and less and that is a serious problem. There is no more link between the society and its companies, only their own corporate interests count. The days of a company feeling connected to its society and investing in it are gone; even where they do charity work, what they give is hugely overshadowed by the amount of tax money they evade.
So yes, some anti-globalist movements certainly to have a point. There are massive positive sides to globalism, but also very flawed aspects of it.
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