Socialism is the major threat to humanity

Original post by Bornblue

Hitler and Mussolini were socialist ?! They were pretty much the exact opposite.

how were they "the exact opposite"?

Reply 22

Original post by flamboy

how were they "the exact opposite"?

A lot of socialists in that period in Europe were of the anarchist direct democacy variety and fascist forces persecuted them. You can't get much more opposite than that.

(edited 8 years ago)

Reply 23

Original post by newpersonage

The road to hell is clearly marked, twentieth century history is a route map! I know Corbyn might have good intentions...

Look, go see how the west changed economically after world war two. It was command state capitalist economies everywhere from America to Britain. We maintained parliamentary democracy and the concept of individual. By your logic every government after world war two in this country was fascist. Saying railways should be in the hand of public ownership is not fascism. Especially since Corbyn's version of public ownership is a mixture of state ownership and customer and worker cooperative. It isn't fascist. There is no way a fascist dictator of Europe would have put up with a worker ran enterprise and they didn't.

(edited 8 years ago)

Reply 24

Original post by ChaoticButterfly

A lot of socialists in that period in Europe were of the anarchist direct democacy variety and fascist forces persecuted them. You can't get much more opposite than that.

1) "socialism" has no time-specific context as a theory.
2) if socialism = anarchism, why not just call it anarchism then? if there are different varieties of socialism (e.g. hitler's, stalin's, "the anarchists'", etc) then surely it doesn't make sense to say "socialism" when it is really something different.

I wasn't trying to label hitler as the epitome of socialism with my earlier comment by the way

Reply 25

YellowWallpaper

10

Original post by Aj12

Mussolini started out as a socialist. Though I'm not really sure how the op has linked this to corbyn being inspired by Hitler.
Posted from TSR Mobile

The OP is deluded, it seems.

Reply 26

newpersonage

OP

6

Original post by ChaoticButterfly

Look, go see how the west changed economically after world war two. It was command state capitalist economies everywhere from America to Britain. We maintained parliamentary democracy and the concept of individual. By your logic every government after world war two in this country was fascist. Saying railways should be in the hand of public ownership is not fascism. Especially since Corbyn's version of public ownership is a mixture of state ownership and customer and worker cooperative. It isn't fascist. There is no way a fascist dictator of Europe would have put up with a worker ran enterprise and they didn't.

These state run enterprises were largely a mistake. Britain was damaged economically as a result:

Mutuals are a different matter....

Reply 27

Original post by newpersonage

These state run enterprises were largely a mistake. Britain was damaged economically as a result:

Mutuals are a different matter....

Considering capitalism's history is growth crisis growth crisis it wasn't that bad. There is a reason why the the period is knows as the 'golden age of capitalism'. Ye it hit a wall but that seems pretty inevitable for any economic system that is capitalistic. Like they did then the neoliberals thought they had 'solved' capitalism but that proved to be wrong as well.

Economies move in cycles. I;m not an economist but that graph starts when the mixed econmoy model was goign tits up. I'm sure I could find a load of graphs about stuff that portray neoliberalism as being terrible when the financial crisis happened.

(edited 8 years ago)

Reply 28

Mr Liberal

Original post by newpersonage

I was just looking at the Wikipedia article on Mussolini https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benito_Mussolini and followed the links to his leadership of the Italian International Socialists (PSI). There can be no doubt that, as a socialist, he was as important as Lenin in 20th century history, having been largely responsible for both the communist insurrections at the end of WWI and National Socialism.

Hitler's first National Socialist manifesto, his 25 point plan is very Corbynist:

9. All citizens must have equal rights and obligations.
10. The first obligation of every citizen must be to work both spiritually and physically. The activity of individuals is not to counteract the interests of the universality, but must have its result within the framework of the whole for the benefit of all. Consequently we demand:
11. Abolition of unearned (work and labour) incomes. Breaking of debt (interest)-slavery.
12. In consideration of the monstrous sacrifice in property and blood that each war demands of the people, personal enrichment through a war must be designated as a crime against the people. Therefore we demand the total confiscation of all war profits.
13. We demand the nationalisation of all (previous) associated industries (trusts).
14. We demand a division of profits of all heavy industries.
15. We demand an expansion on a large scale of old age welfare.
17. We demand a land reform suitable to our needs, provision of a law for the free expropriation of land for the purposes of public utility, abolition of taxes on land and prevention of all speculation in land.
20. The state is to be responsible for a fundamental reconstruction of our whole national education program, to enable every capable and industrious German to obtain higher education and subsequently introduction into leading positions.
21. The State is to care for the elevating national health by protecting the mother and child, by outlawing child-labor, by the encouragement of physical fitness, by means of the legal establishment of a gymnastic and sport obligation, by the utmost support of all organizations concerned with the physical instruction of the young.

The way that modern international socialists have managed to characterise national socialism as a nationalist movement rather than as a socialist ideology shared by Italy, Spain, Bulgaria, Vichy France etc is amazing. Kids are being taught at school that caring for your countrymen is the first step to Nazism when it was the nation states of Europe that opposed the ideologues.

-------------------------------

There is no definitive answer to your thread. Communism, socialism, or capitalism don't work. It's a combination of the three that make the world go around. All I do know is that Liberalism is Cancer, and it needs removing from society.

I believe that the harder you work, the more you should earn, and the higher the ladder you should clime. I also believe that the top man should not be earning £2m a year, whilst the person on the shop floor is on £6.70 per hour. I love partnerships and cooperatives, where very worker can share in success, but the top man still does well. This I call friendly capitalism. I also believe that workers have had their rights eroded , and whilst I don't want to return to the dark old days of the 70s, I feel that uncaring managers are having it to easy. I believe that the influx of East Europeans has done the UK very little good.

Reply 29

Original post by flamboy

1) "socialism" has no time-specific context as a theory.
2) if socialism = anarchism, why not just call it anarchism then? if there are different varieties of socialism (e.g. hitler's, stalin's, "the anarchists'", etc) then surely it doesn't make sense to say "socialism" when it is really something different.

I wasn't trying to label hitler as the epitome of socialism with my earlier comment by the way

Anarchism is a branch of socialism. Every anarchists is a socialist but not every socialist is an anarchist If you get my meaning. The anarchists rejected the 'scientific socialism' of Marxism and especially the Leninist version. The idea of the state owning everything and everyone and then transitioning to a stateless (by definition) communist society based on the ludicrous idea that it is possible to have a deterministic like understanding of humans development and can map out how to get to communism. This was heavily apposed by anarchists.

Instead anarchists preferred a more radical and direct approach to creating socialism that resulted in stuff like anarcho-syndacalism in the Spanish civil war. Pockets of direct economic democracy. You can see these in the Factory committees in revolutionary Russia or the CNT unions in Spain in the civil war. Both Fascists and Leninist based socialist forces were deeply hostile to these movements. It is an insult to the people that died fighting against fascism and other forms of totalitarianism that they were fascists. They identified as socialist and extremely anti-fascist and died trying to or for resisting fascism.

Which is why it irritates me when people on here accuse me of the no true Scotsman falacy. It isn't my fault people are generally ignorant of these political movements and that they have been erased from history by a large amount. So ye, I get annoyed when people say fascism is a result of socialism, or that socialism is by definition extreme statism. Socialist based political currents have lead to those things and/or advocated them but it is not the entirety of socialism.

Edit: Just found this quote by Bakunin on why a so called workers state is not any better than the system socialism is supposed rallying against.

"When the people are being beaten with a stick, they are not much happier if it is called "the People's Stick."

(edited 8 years ago)

Reply 30

Original post by ChaoticButterfly

Anarchism is a branch of socialism.

no it's not

Reply 31

troubadour.

19

Original post by Bornblue

To describe hitler as socialist is an absolute disgrace and a shameless measure to try and discredit the left and socialism.

It does a good enough job of that by itself.

Reply 32

Original post by flamboy

no it's not

See, willfully ignorant.

What do you think anarcho-syndacalism was then?

(edited 8 years ago)

Reply 33

The two eds

4

It really saddens me that socialists hate this country so much that they are willing to destroy it culturally, economically, socially, demographically, environmentally and remove all aspiration.

Reply 34

Original post by ChaoticButterfly

See, willfully ignorant.

What do you think anarcho-syndacalism was then?

a type of anarcho-collectivism, which is, in and of itself, a type of anarchism, which is a broad ideology

Reply 35

username878267

Original post by Rakas21

I'm not comparing Hitler and Own Jones, I'm asserting that socialism is a far broader ideology than your led to believe.

The union thing was racist however there's nothing in Marx's writings that says eugenics is wrong (the reason Hitler went after the disabled) and for the poor he put everybody in the army ao I'm not sure how true your assertion is.

The main thing the right does wrong is conflate socialism and communism.
There's nothing that says socialism is free of discrimination, that's post Soviet relativism.

Marxism does not equate socialism today. Socialism today has developed a social aspect to it which absolutely can not be ignored.
But besides no part of hitter was socialist - real socialism would be the people controlling the public assets- not the government. Command economies in which the government controls everything are fascist - not socialist.

The right seem to describe all bad things as socialism to discredit socialists today.
I'm a socialist - That means I support a more equal society in which the people control the means of production- not corporate elites - where people can gather in unions and workers have their rights protected.

Now what part of that advocates genocide or mass murder?

People seem to have trouble disentangling real ideological socialism with tyrannical dictators using it as merely a label. Hitler want a socialist - Stalin wasn't a socialist - Mao wasn't a socialist and North Korea certainly aren't.

In all 4 there was a rigid, inflexible class system - the very opposite of socialism.

Reply 36

sombm

Watch these videos, especially the one on the first link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rv5t6rC6yvg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QaZEGcoGXo

Reply 37

username878267

Original post by flamboy

how were they "the exact opposite"?

Socialism believes in a quite (but not absolute) equal society where individuals and workers are given rights through unions and the people own the means of production.

Hitler's society wasn't exactly equal was it?
He banned trade unions - discriminated against classes of individuals and controlled the economy in an authoritarian, fascist manner - not a collective socialist one.

So yeah - pretty much the exact opposite.

Reply 38

Libtardian

Original post by Bornblue

Socialism believes in a quite (but not absolute) equal society where individuals and workers are given rights through unions and the people own the means of production.

Hitler's society wasn't exactly equal was it?
He banned trade unions - discriminated against classes of individuals and controlled the economy in an authoritarian, fascist manner - not a collective socialist one.

So yeah - pretty much the exact opposite.

Socialism can be either ownership or regulation of distribution/exchange/production.

Hitler considered Nazi Germany to be a socialist state...

(Starts ~1:41)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnpTWKKWQ1o&t=1m41s

Reply 39

username878267