fee.org - Joseph Goebbels' Own Words Show He Loved Socialism and Saw It as 'the Future'
Socialists will continue to argue that Nazism was not "real" socialism, but the Nazi propaganda despised capitalism and spoke like Karl Marx. - 2023-01-23

|----- ... before capitalists and socialists agree on whether the Nazis were "really socialists."

... and not just because the word is right there in the name: National Socialism. If you read the speeches and private conversations of the Nazi hierarchy, it's clear they loved socialism and despised individualism and capitalism.

In his new book Hitler's National Socialism, the historian Rainer Zitelmann gives a penetrating look into the ideas that shaped men like Hitler and Goebbels. While it's clear they saw their own brand of socialism as distinct from Marxism (more on that later), there is no question they saw socialism as the future and despised bourgeoisie capitalism. ***

...

Phrases like "we are a workers' party," "the worker has a claim to a living standard that corresponds to what he produces," "money... is the reverse with socialism," and "we are against the political bourgeoisie" could easily be plucked from Marx's own speeches and writings - yet it's clear Goebbels despised Marx and saw his brand of "national socialism" as distinct from Marxism.

So what sets National Socialism apart from Marxism? There are two primary differences.

The first is that Hitler and Goebbels fused their socialism with race and German nationalism, rejecting the international ethos of Marxism " "Workers of the world unite!" " for a more practical one that emphasized Germany's Vlkischen movement.

... As the Nobel Prize-winning economist F.A. Hayek pointed out, it made socialism more palatable to many Germans...

"The supreme tragedy is still not seen that in Germany it was largely people of good will who, by their socialist policies, prepared the way for the forces which stand for everything they detest," Hayek wrote in The Road to Serfdom (1944). "Few recognize that the rise of fascism... was not a reaction against the socialist trends of the preceding period but a necessary outcome of those tendencies."

The second difference is that National Socialists were less concerned with directly controlling the means of production.
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**
"We are socialists because we see in socialism, that is the union of all citizens, the only chance to maintain our *racial inheritance* and to regain our political freedom and renew our German state" - Joseph Goebbels (1928)

"Fascism is the stage reached after communism has proved an illusion..." - Friedrich A. von Hayek

Communism requires "total ownership of means of production"; fascism imposes "total control over means of production" - but both are socialist totalitarian (government 'uber alles' / above individual rights) regimes.

mises.org - Why Nazism Was Socialism and Why Socialism Is Totalitarian - 2021-10-01
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www.vaholocaust.org - "25 points of Nazi Party" - "National Socialistic Yearbook 1941" - Published by: Central Publishing House of N.S.D.A.P. - The program of the NSDAP [PDF]

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The program is the political foundation of the NSDAP and accordingly the primary political law of the State. It has been made brief and clear intentionally. ...

... Fuehrer has succeeded in the realization of essential portions of the Party program from the fundamentals to the detail.

The Party Program of the NSDAP was proclaimed on the 24 February 1920 by Adolf Hitler ... and since that day has remained unaltered. Within the national socialist philosophy is summarized in 25 points:

...

3. We demand land and territory (colonies) for the sustenance of our people, and colonization for our surplus population.

4. Only a member of the race can be a citizen. A member of the race can only be one who is of German blood, without consideration of creed. Consequently no Jew can be a member of the race.

...

7. We demand that the state be charged first with providing the opportunity for a livelihood and way of life for the citizens. ...

...

10. The first obligation of every citizen must be to work both spiritually and physically.

11. Abolition of unearned (work and labour) incomes. Breaking of rent-slavery.

...

13. We demand the nationalization 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.***

...

19. We demand substitution of a German common law in place of the Roman Law serving a materialistic world-order.

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. ... The comprehension of the concept of the State must be striven for by the school [Staatsbuergerkunde] ...

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...

22. We demand abolition of the mercenary troops and formation of a national army.

23. We demand legal opposition to known lies and their promulgation through the press. ...

24. We demand freedom of religion for all religious denominations within the state so long as they do not endanger its existence or oppose the moral senses of the Germanic race. ... It combats the Jewish-materialistic spirit within and around us...: common utility precedes individual utility.

25. For the execution of all of this we demand the formation of a strong central power in the Reich. Unlimited authority of the central parliament over the whole Reich and its organizations in general. ...

*** Adolf Hitler proclaimed the following explanation for this program on the 13 April 1928:
Regarding the false interpretations of Point 17... the following definition is necessary:
"...land which has been illegally acquired or is not administered from the viewpoint of the national welfare. This is directed primarily against the Jewish land-speculation companies."
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www.britannica.com (brief)
en.wikipedia.org

Same in Cuba, and other "socialist/Marxist" countries where the elites enjoyed privileges of dachas and private investments and accumulated great wealth.

Hitler didn't make the mistake of abolishing significantly more efficient large private industrial enterprises (again, see reasons in mises.org link and elsewhere) - which allowed rapid rebuilding of the Wehrmacht economy - but he did, for example, force Ferdinand Porsche to create Volkswagen ("People's car") for the masses, etc. etc.

What most fans of "socialism" are trying to imply is that, on one hand, "socialism" can have many forms other than failed "communism" and be "good, benevolent" - yet in another breath they insist that only Marxist "socialism" (Marx himself didn't distinguish between "socialism" and "communism") was the only and true one, and there can be no other (like German National Socialism) which we all know has definitely not been the case.

Even in Soviet Union there were several different socialist groups. the largest of which were Bolsheviks (far-left faction of the original Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party [RSDLP]) led by Lenin, Stalin, Dzerzhinsky et al(eventual, and the only winners) and more bourgeois-socialist Mensheviks, led by Trotsky, Axelrod, Dan, Martov et al., which were eventually outlawed and subjugated or eliminated.

Historians generally agree that Nazism was a distinct ideology separate from traditional socialism

Mo, historians, like Hitler and Goebbels, generally agree that Nazism is different from Marxism ("traditional"?? socialism) - which would be correct.

Like I said, unless you think that "traditional socialism / Marxism" (i.e., "total government ownership of means of production" and total elimination of private property / enterprises) is the only form of "socialism" then it's difficult to explain the existence of [and attachment to] "other/benevolent forms(?)" of "socialism."

... but their core ideology was centered on race, nationalism, and state power...

Yes, and as my posts and links show, none of these exclude "socialism" - after all, the core of socialism is state power and "patriotism"

Repeat: Communism requires "total ownership of means of production"; fascism imposes "total control over means of production" - but both are socialist totalitarian regimes (government 'uber alles' / above individual rights).

Who better to learn this from than the chief propagandist of ideology?

It is well known now that Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime frequently used deception and propaganda to mask their true intentions and advance their agenda.

Yes, so do/did every other socialist/communist country - that's why need for total control/ownership of the media. In USSR "samizdat" (underground press) was prosecuted, and typewriters issued only to "good communists."
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