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.
Ludendorf’s WWI ‘War Communism’ and Marxist-Leninism rhyme.
Rudolf Jung (b.1882 – d.1945) was the first principal theoretician of National Socialism, a Sudeten-German trade-unionist and railway engineer who joined the Austro-Hungarian German Workers’ Party (later German National Socialist Workers’ Party, DNSAP) in 1909 and was heavily responsible for both building up the early successes of the movement and for establishing close links in the post-WWI era with emerging National Socialist parties in other German-speaking areas (primarily the NSDAP, the DNSAP’s ‘bruderpartei’ which later eclipsed it and took over leadership of the inter-state NS movement). In 1919 Jung wrote and published the first theoretical treatment of of the NS ideological worldview: ‘Der nationale Sozialismus: Seine Grundlagen, sein Werdegang, und seine Ziele’. The book was expanded and revised in two subsequent editions, the 1922 edition being the most interesting, since it was a treatment of the NS worldview written when Hitler was still one leader among many, rather than the dominating force of the movement. Jung in his book is quite clear in positioning National Socialism as a branch of the socialist movement, as were most National Socialists (even most Hiterlians). From his book’s conclusion:
“The Marxists constantly maintain that there is only one form of socialism, the Marxist, and that everything else is mere fraud and deception. Since, however, there are multiple Marxist tendencies, each of which denies the right of the others to be socialist, it has been difficult for them to uphold this claim. Indeed, socialism has always existed, both before Marxism and alongside it. It was understood to mean – and does mean – endeavours aimed at making the life and work of the individual serviceable to the whole, at making him the bearer of the collective will. In turn, the community takes on the responsibility of administering to the needs of the individual, of supporting him morally, spiritually, and economically. This can occur either out of purely materialistic considerations; as a consequence of the precepts of Christian charity; or, finally, on völkisch grounds. Depending on the circumstances, one is dealing here either with Judeo-Marxist, Christian, or National Socialism.”