How socialist was Germany under National Socialism?, Bryan Caplan asks:
I first started pondering Nazi economic policy during the collapse of the Soviet bloc.
Since the end of World War II, mainstream culture had energetically covered Nazi crimes, but largely gave the Soviet bloc a pass. Yet in the late 80s and early 90s, a long list of long-forgotten Soviet crimes loudly entered the Western conversation: Lenin’s coup against Russia’s first democratic government; Stalin’s agricultural collectivization; the Gulag; the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact; the Katyn massacre; mass deportations to Siberia; and more. Once there was widespread recognition that self-righteous Soviet socialists had committed many Nazi-level crimes, the etymology of “Nazi means ‘National Socialist’” intrigued me. If the world’s most famous brand of socialists turned out to be total monsters, could the world’s most famous brand of monsters turn out to be total socialists?
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After all, socialists have a long history of denying that other socialists are socialists. In the late 1920s, for example, the Comintern started insisting that so-called “social democracy” was actually “social fascism,” the “moderate wing of fascism.” Democratic socialists, for their part, routinely retroactively strip revolutionary socialists of their socialist credentials once things turn ugly enough. Stalin wasn’t really socialist, Mao wasn’t really socialist, and neither is North Korea.
Upshot: Even if the Nazis were the sincerest of socialists, mainstream socialists would almost certainly deny them the label regardless of the facts.
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Germany had fairly high economic freedom before World War I. This collapsed during World War I and the subsequent hyperinflation. By modern standards, Germany 1916-1923 would be virtually the most socialist country on Earth — though remember that due to lack of credible data, Fraser doesn’t score Cuba, Eritrea, or North Korea.
After the end of the hyperinflation, German economic freedom briefly recovers, peaking at 6.6 right before the Great Depression. Then there’s a total collapse. When the Nazis take over in 1933, Germany is already down at 4.1. If it were a modern country, that would be just freer than Sudan, Zimbabwe, and Venezuela.
Measured in rank order, Nazi Germany keeps falling, hitting rock bottom — #166 out of 166 — by 1936. But in absolute score, Nazi Germany falls every single year, from 3.6 in 1934 to 0.7 in 1945.
There is no question that National Socialism is s form of socialism. Just ask G. B. Shaw or Time.
One of the differences among socialisms is how they treat the national issue. Marxists are doctrine internationalists, and they used to maintain that the only distinguishing characteristic among people that really counts is economic class. That position seems to have been abandoned during WW I, because the proletariat turned out to be nationalists.
Fascism and Naziism valorate the nation (or more narrowly the race for Nazis) in place of the proletariat. That position got Mussolini kicked out of the Italian Socialist Party, which was, and still is, doctrinaire Marxist.
Every European country, except the USSR, had a strong national/socialist or fascist party during the 1930’s and 1940’s. These parties facilitated the German occupation of western and middle Europe, and they provide both willing occupation governments and armies to the German. There were European divisions fighting alongside the Wehrmacht during Operation Barbarossa, and there was even a French divisions defending Berlin at the end.
These facts are just too embarrassing to modern Europeans, and so they deny their grandparents were nazis or fascists. But they were.
The current EU is socialist, and it is a reminder that all forms of socialism are inherently top-down authoritarian (and physically violent), and some are totalitarian.