Comments by "Aidan B" (@aidanb58) on "TimeGhost History"
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@Jimmy-sz5wd
And I hate to break it to you, an wartime economy with state direction is nothing new. Further, you manage to overstate even that - while things like wages and investment decisions were examined by the state, this was almost always done through the DAF, an organization openly run by private owners, for their own benefit. In the day-to-day operation of the vast majority of nazi germany's businesses, very little materially changed from the previous private system, as opposed to the new one. The biggest changes and directions could be felt in the area of wartime industry, which again, was no outlier among other western countries at the time. This given, your metaphor falls flat. A better one would be "If you notionally own a bike, but someone else can technically fine you or take it away for damaging it though they never really act on this, is the bike still yours?" In Nazi germany, in the overwhelming majority of cases, the business owners were the ones that determined "when you can use it, where you can go with it, and with whom.: In any case, the answer of course is "yes, in every way that matters" and the supposition that state direction means private property is not truly "private" is quite silly when one extrapolates that to other forms of large-scale direction which force businesses hands in certain directions as a mere matter of good business. Also, I'm not sure what your goal is in quoting Hitler saying that he could help his country better than socialists, or in quoting something Hitler openly rebuked many times over. It's almost as if you're fixating on the surface appearance of the words, instead of even trying to find the meaning.
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@rcvisee74 Individual citizens? Not really. Private entities lay claim to customers, as a group, not citizens. They don't advertise, or pander, to individuals, they pander to groups and demographics, and most importantly the giant interworking collection of individuals known as the market. That's the important part, any ideology can be shown to fit into those rough categories if you twist them enough. And isn't it just a bit telling that the thing the government has to protect us against is also the thing they're trying to protect in the first place, the market? In any case, I just don't think the comparison is all that relevant. And, on top of that, you're assuming all socialism has, or requires the intervention of, a state.
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@rcvisee74 Yeah, just one thing... according to who? You? Oh it's associated with state control, by those that refuse to read socialist literature or history. Mate, the first socialists didn't want a state. Even marx didn't want a state, he wanted a transitory Direct Democracy, after which a central state would cease to exist. The problem is, according to your definition, there are famous capitalists like Hoppe and Hayek which are more socialist than famous socialists like Proudhon and Maréchal, and that just makes no sense. You cannot simply say "statism = socialism," when even Adam Smith stood for things like graduated taxation, public spending, and public property. Hell, if you consider any ideology with the state in supremacy socialist, than the vatican is socialist, because the religious figures are the governing force. The ancient egyptians, romans, or monarchs are socialists, despite socialists literally first popping up in opposition to that last one. My point is that the distinction you tried to create really can be seen in any ideology, and so again, the comparison is useless. When defining a word, you have to take into account all of it's similarities, and discount or re-categorize outsiders. Since long before marx, every socialist has advocated for the workers, as a whole, to be in control of the MoP. That is the one thing that pulls them together. The thing that differentiates them is not in spite of that goal, but goals in addition to it. And that's the problem, every socialist ideology falls neatly within this classification, and has forever. The only outlier is prussian socialism, national socialism. The only way to actually count it as a form of socialism is to take them on their word for it, and thus redefine socialism to be any statist ideology. By that point, you're not saying it's socialist, just that it's authoritarian, and using socialism as an unqualified synonym. And I don't think anyone would disagree with you there, but by phrasing it as you do, you're associating people who just want higher taxation and less tax breaks in america, with the literal nazis, all while protesters are literally being abducted in unmarked vehicles and federal police and troops are being sent into individual cities. Maybe, just maybe, you've got your target on the wrong group. I don't mean to be rude with this response, as you've been very civil so far, but I carry over the annoyance of having to explain that socialism is not statism from my days as a libertarian socialist, and one of my pet peeves is inconsistent terms in argument, even if it's unintentional. In short, sorry for any hostility, but statism is not socialism in any meaningful sense, and when examining any ideology, even ones you feel would never work, a certain amount of nuance must always be applied, beyond single sentence, or single word even, definitions.
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@rcvisee74 Yes, because very few people use it with any sort of nuance. Even the nuance you present here, which I don't quite agree with (but i'll get into that in a bit) is more than you usually get. I'm not sure if you're speaking as a European, or just with a European perspective, but in the States such nuance does not exist. If you're left of right-wing, or rather left of whoever the right holds up, which at the moment tends to be people very deep into the right, you are fair game to be called communist, socialist, marxist, anarchist, and now, nazi. As I said previously, I want to drive that nuance. Now, onto the Rousseau bit. He... wasn't really that important to socialism, as a movement. He certainly influenced thought, but not as something to be followed, as something largely to be critiqued. They saw his claims, like "Man is born free, and he is everywhere in chains," and in part used them to show how things like private property, capitalism, and unequal wealth distribution were fundamental societal ills, "chains" holding people down. One could argue they took more inspiration from Adam Smith than Rousseau, and he was fundamental in certain critiques of capitalism and his own system, like the pin factory example he gave. Rousseau, for all he contributed to the world, remained a tiny part of Socialist thought. And i'll remind you again, this socialism you decry was not the socialism of the time, nor really any time. The socialists then were rebelling against the state, against central authority of the rich and nobles entrenched within government. That isn't really conducive to any sort of general will. Alongside that, your interpretation of the info you set forward is just all over the place. You say that the task of General Will socialism is to make everyone equal... and then list the nazis? The nazis, whose very ideology was built on the fact that everything was inherently unequal, and it was on the strong to rise and dominate the rest? I mean, you can't claim the nazis, the social darwinist phrenologists who threw people in camps for daring to exist gave one crap about equality, even formally. They reviled democracy, because it gave the weak a voice. I would recommend watching Erbkrank, if you can stomach it, and find an english translation. It's a nazi propaganda film that depicts images of disabled people, and gives figures for the drain they are on the economy and the state, justifying their sterilization. That's how much they cared about equality. They didn't care about economic equality either, everyone was poor while buisness leaders were admitted into the party and deals with american capitalists across the ocean were made. The act of "socializing people," as you describe it, is... nonsense. Your definition of socialist, again, runs into the same problem pointed out last time, which I will quote. "The problem is, according to your definition, there are famous capitalists like Hoppe and Hayek which are more socialist than famous socialists like Proudhon and Maréchal, and that just makes no sense." Similarly, your definition is basically saying the same thing, but longer. "socializing their people" means nothing of the sort, to you I suppose it's just controlling them regimentaly, although the purpose for that seems to go wholly unstated in your mind. Similarly, "controlling the economy for equality," is... a few things. One, it is not socialist. Adam Smith, again, recommended certain types of taxation in order to curb economic inequality in things like housing. He was not a socialist, nor is that policy socialist by design. One can strive for a far more equal society under capitalism, and one could make an argument the serfs were among the most "equal" it got, being that the vast majority were at the same economic level. And finally... how did either of them strive for economic equality? An argument could be made for the early years of the NEP, perhaps, but Nazi germany? They took away any chance at equality, through either guarantee of socialism or opportunity of capitalism. They took property away from the workers, both for the workers to work on, and to own. They rewarded party members and compliant/friendly industrialists and capitalists over their own people. Hell, and I cannot stress this enough, they threw people in forced labor camps. That is not equality in any sense, even state-driven. So again, I can only assume socialism to you relates directly to totalitarianism. So, in other words - I disagree.
As for the last bit, I would recommend reading this, "Ur Fascism." (https://www.pegc.us/archive/Articles/eco_ur-fascism.pdf) The thing is, fascism has most often risen out of the failure of liberal democracy. And that could either be through wholly external factors out of their controls, like massive amounts of debt, worldwide depressions, or war, or it could be due to things like rising internal tensions, racism, ect. The Weimar republic is a great example, external factors driving extreme economic hardship, which led to internal feuding, which justified a totalitarian takeover. One could argue the same in Chile, a candidate disliked by higher powers, (The American Government) was democratically elected, so a coup was staged to overthrow them, and instituted a fascist dictatorship. And i'll get to arguing this case in a second, but you see something similar right about now. That's kind of the point though, when they go totalitarian, they are no longer democracies. To paraphrase the old joke, "What happens when countries run out of cash? They either go commie, or they go fash." Generally, hand conditions and large amounts of tensions, manufactured or natural, usually lead to the end of liberal democracy. And onto the events in modern day America... just no. For one, these are military-garb, federal officers, driving around in unmarked vehicles. That is already highly suspect, but they don't just target people near federal buildings, they arrest people miles away, and in some cases hours after a protest is over. That is not justifiable, by any means. Similarly, the president is now putting into act a plan that will send more federal officers and troops into cities run by politicians he disagrees with, to "keep the peace." You must understand, the last time this happened on this scale was the Nullification Crisis, and that happened with a state threatening to leave the Union. Yes, the last time we pulled out these big guns on our own people, they were literally threatening to illegally leave. Ironically enough, that was done by the president widely thought to have suffered from lead poisoning, and one Trump has called his favorite. This is not normal. This is not justifiable. He is sending federal troops into places because he does not agree with politicians in those places, under the pretense of keeping order. This cannot be normalized, because if it is, it'll only get worse. As of now, the police have killed, raped, beaten, blinded, broken, abducted, harassed and crushed thousands over the past month. They have targeted medical personnel, public officials, journalists, and innocent bystanders not even protesting, and in many of these cases have cause serious, irreversible injuries. And now? Now we're pushing them into cities even harder, giving them less legal accountability and more power. No, this is the start of fascism. And I hate to appear rude, or callous, but the justifications of these acts are how we normalize them. Again, Ur-Fascism. You'll hopefully see the uncomfortable parallels. Grouping all of your enemies, however unrelated, under one label while blaming that label for terror and widespread political tension was literally, not figuratively, literally, how hitler rose to power. And honestly, I hate to appear cynical or overdramatic, but I cannot see Operation Legend turning out as anything but an unintentional (hopefully) Operation Himmler, which will raise tensions only further and justify even more power being held. I could be wrong, but it doesn't look that way so far.
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@burstingwizard975 Ok, cool. A few of the other figures I cited may be on the same website, so i'm not sure.
And that is a fair point, that sometimes ideas are popular for all the wrong reasons, but I was mainly referencing how ideologies are usually able to iron out their weak points. For example capitalism has been around quite a while, and reading the early works of people like Adam Smith, you see a whole bunch of things you really wouldn't expect a capitalist to say. That's largely because ideas get more specialized over time, more in depth, and as I say, usually work to appease their critics, or at least prove them wrong. That's why when I discuss an ideology that's as old as capitalism, it might be important to see how it's shifted over time, or what it first promised, or if it's working now. I'm not saying you're not doing that, it's just something i've personally been trying to do. Everyone thinks their ideology is good, and most aren't completely shut off from criticism. It's just that in most cases, when you have some sort of socialist trying to debate against a meme page funded by billionaire oil tycoons, you hear that response much less often, and it has less of an impact.
Yes, I think most people go through a lot of political phases, especially those that get interested in politics when they're younger. But that sort of shift is a good thing, it helps to gain new perspectives. And yes, I have to agree, i'm glad we talked.
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@Bluearmy76
Why is it that right wingers have such a tough time accepting their past? I'm sorry, but your denialism holds no water. What you just quoted was hitler years before his actual election. Do you want to know what he said when he actually was in power? "Death to marxism." I could fill up a comment section with the amount of times one can easily quote hitler talking about his hatred of the left, support of private property, and hatred of socialist principles. He didn't hate entrepreneurs, he worked with them. He didn't hate the "free market," he made its greatest advocates even richer. Individuals in private business weren't "controlled strictly by the state," they were bribed by a state that put their protection into law. And, bud, I hate to break it to you, nothing you said was the "complete opposite of right wing." He was a proud right wing anti-socialist, through and through. He wasn't a "true marxist," nor was he a marxist or leftist of any sort. The assertion that "literally none of his ideology was right wing" is hilarious though, given that literally all of his ideology came from, and was supported by, the right, as even he admitted. The notion of fatherland and "big government" to enforce strict obedience to it is a key aspect of right wing governments going centuries back, how is conservative policy "as left wing as is physically possible?" It seems you want to paint even modern right wing policy as left wing. Look, I'm sorry you hate the fact that hitler was a proud right wing anti-socialist, but making a fool of yourself wont change that.
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@starkat70
But, they didn't believe themselves to be socialists at all, and they openly preached systems that were entirely counter to socialism. They were statist authoritarians, yes, and right wing. They were not socialists in every form of the word. You're trying to project your modern day political views onto history and it isn't working out well for you, given that you don't even know the definitions or history of the terms you're using. It isn't defending socialism to correctly point out that the nazis weren't socialists, and the fact that you jump to an ideological attack proves that you don't care about history in the first place, only the ideological attacks that your version of history allow you to make. If you actually cared about death counts you would reject your clear right wing ideology, but we both know you don't actually care, and just feel the need to do anything to strike out against the socialists, just like the nazis did.
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