The following article is likely hard to find; so I think it is good to post it here. From BrookesNews.Com:
Nazism is Socialism*
Friedrich August von Hayek
BrookesNews.Com
Monday 19 October 2009
Published in the spring of 1933
Incomprehensible as the recent events in Germany must seem to anyone who has known that country chiefly in the democratic post-war years, any attempt fully to understand these developments must treat them as the culmination of tendencies which date back to a period long before the Great War. Nothing could be more superficial than to consider the forces which dominate the Germany of today as reactionary in the sense that they want a return to the social and economic order of 1914.
The persecution of the Marxists, and of democrats in general, tends to obscure the fundamental fact that National “Socialism” is a genuine socialist movement, whose leading ideas are the final fruit of the anti-liberal tendencies which have been steadily gaining ground in Germany since the later part of the Bismarckian era, and which led the majority of the German intelligentsia first to “socialism of the chair” and later to Marxism in its social-democratic or communist form.
One of the main reasons why the socialist character of National Socialism has been quite generally unrecognized, is, no doubt, its alliance with the nationalist groups which represent the great industries and the great landowners. But this merely proves that these groups too, as they have since learnt to their bitter disappointment, have, at least partly, been mistaken as to the nature of the movement. But only partly because, and this is the most characteristic feature of modern Germany, many capitalists are themselves strongly influenced by socialistic ideas, and have not sufficient belief in capitalism to defend it with a clear conscience.
But, in spite of this, the German entrepreneur class have manifested almost incredible short-sightedness in allying themselves with a movement of whose strong anti-capitalistic tendencies there should never have been any doubt. A careful observer must always have been aware that the opposition of the Nazis to the established socialist parties, which gained them the sympathy of the entrepreneur, was only to a very small extent directed against their economic policy.
What the Nazis mainly objected to was their internationalism and all the aspects of their cultural programme which were still influenced by liberal ideas. But the accusations against the social-democrats and the communists which were most effective in their propaganda were not so much directed against their programme as against their supposed practice — their corruption and nepotism, and even their alleged alliance with “the golden International of Jewish Capitalism.”
It would, indeed, hardly have been possible for the Nationalists to advance fundamental objections to the economic policy of the other socialist parties when their own published programme differed from these only in that its socialism was much cruder and less rational. The famous 25 points drawn up by Herr Feder, one of Hitler’s early allies, repeatedly endorsed by Hitler and recognized by the by-laws of the National-Socialist party as the immutable basis of all its actions, which together with an extensive commentary is circulating throughout Germany in many hundreds of thousands of copies, is full of ideas resembling those of the early socialists.
But the dominant feature is a fierce hatred of anything capitalistic-individualistic profit seeking, large scale enterprise, banks, joint-stock companies, department stores, “international finance and loan capital,” the system of “interest slavery” in general; the abolition of these is described as the “basis of the programme, around which everything else turns.” It was to this programme that the masses of the German people, who were already completely under the influence of collectivist ideas, responded so enthusiastically.
That this violent anti-capitalistic attack is genuine, and not a mere piece of propaganda, becomes as clear from the personal history of the intellectual leaders of the movement as from the general milieu from which it springs. It is not even denied that many of the young men who today play a prominent part in it have previously been communists or socialists.
And to any observer of the literary tendencies which made the Germans intelligentsia ready to join the ranks of the new party, it must be clear that the common characteristic of all the politically influential writers — in many cases free from definite party affiliations, was their anti-liberal and anti-capitalist trend. Groups like that formed around the review “Die Tat” have made the phrase “the end of capitalism” an accepted dogma to most young Germans.
That the movement in more anti-liberal than anything else is closely connected with another important aspect of it, the anti-rational, mystical and romantic sentiment, which has been growing for years among the youth of Germany. The protest against “liberal intellectualism”, which was recently so strongly voiced by the students of the University of Berlin, was not an isolated aberration but a true expression of the feeling of great masses of the people.
It would be too long a story to go into all the different intellectual sources of the anti-rational tendencies in art and literature which have all converged, often to the amazement and consternation of their originators, in the Nazi movement. But it must be said that here again the main influence which destroyed the belief in the universality and unity of human reason was Marx’s teaching of the class-conditioned nature of our thinking, of the difference between bourgeois and proletarian logic, which needed only to be applied to other social groups such as nation or races to supply the weapon now used against rationalism as such.
How completely this Marxian idea has permeated German thought can be seen from the fact that, during the past few years, it has actually been promoted, as “sociology of knowledge”, to the rank of a new branch of learning. It is obvious that, from this intellectual relativism, which denied the existence of truths which could be recognized independently of race, nation, or class, there was only a step to the position which puts sentiment above rational thinking.
That anti-liberalism and anti-rationalism are so intimately bound up with one another is easy to understand, and is, in fact, inevitable. If rule by force by some privileged group is to be justified, its superiority has to be accepted for it cannot be proved. But what is less easily understood, though of immense importance, is the fact illustrated by German and Russian development that the anti-liberalism which, when confined to the economic field, today has the sympathy of almost all the rest of the world, leads inevitably to a reign of universal compulsion, to intolerance and the suppression of intellectual freedom.
The inherent logic of collectivism makes it impossible to confine it to a limited sphere. Beyond certain limits, collective action in the interest of all can only be made possible if all can be coerced into accepting as their common interest what those in power take it to be. At that point, coercion must extend to the individuals’ ultimate aims and ideas, and must attempt to bring everyone’s Weltanschauung into line with the ideas of the rulers.
The collectivist and anti-individualistic character of German National Socialism is not much modified by the fact that it is not a proletarian but middle class socialism, and that it is, in consequence, inclined to favour the small artisan and shop keeper and to set the limit up to which it recognizes private property somewhat higher than does communism. In the first instance, it will probably nominally recognise private property in general. But private initiative will probably be hedged about with restrictions on competition so that little freedom will remain.
Artisans, shop-keepers and professional men will, in all likelihood, be organized in guilds, like those of the medieval crafts, which will regulate their activities. In the case of the wealthier capitalists, state control and restriction of income will leave little more than the name of property, even while the intention of correcting the undue accumulation of wealth in the hands of individuals has not yet been carried out.
Even at the present moment, state commissioners have been put in charge of many important industries and, if the more radical wing of the party has its way, the same is likely to happen in many other cases. At the present time, when the National Socialist party has grown to such an enormous size, and accordingly embraces elements with very divergent views, it is, of course, difficult to say which views on economic policy hold the field, it will mean that the scare of Russian communism has driven German people unaware into something which differs from communism in little but name.
Indeed, its more than probable that the real meaning of the German revolution is that the dreaded expansion of communism into the heart of Europe has taken place but is not recognised because the fundamental similarity of methods and ideas is hidden behind the difference in the phraseology and the privileged groups. For the present, the German people have reacted against the treatment received from the community of democratic and capitalistic countries by leaving that community.
Nothing, however, would be less justifiable than that the nations of western Europe should look down on the German people because they have fallen victims to which, in this country seems a kind of barbarism. What must be realized is that this only the ultimate and necessary outcome of a process of development in which the other nations have been for a long time steadily following Germany, albeit at a considerable distance. The gradual extensions of the field of state activity, the increase in restrictions on international movements of both men and goods, sympathy with central economic planning and the widespread playing with dictatorship ideas, all tend in this direction.
In Germany, where these things had gone furthest, and intellectual reaction, which will now hardly survive, had been definitely under way. The fact that the character of the present movement is so generally misjudged makes it seem likely that the reaction in other countries will speed up, rather than weakened, the operation of these tendencies which lead in the direction in which Germany is now going. So far, there seems little prospect that the reversal of these intellectual tendencies elsewhere will come in time to prevent other countries from following Germany in this last step also.
*This memorandum may be found in the Hayek Paper, box 105, folder 10, Hoover Institution Archives.
mastermind
29 October 2009
How much was Hayek wrong in this very much propagandistic pamphlet written in 1933 was proven by history only a few years later.
The extremely racist/nationalistic nazi Germany was exclusive allowing welfare, and ultimately life itself, only to a group preselected by birth while physically exterminating all others.
Soviet Union on the other hand, was inclusive allowing it to everyone without regard to any differences.
To equal the two just shows the ideological blindness with which the piece was written.
Gaston Phébus
24 March 2010
According to Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, Joseph Goebbels wrote on Dec 6th, 1931 an article in “Der Angriff” (The attack), the official newspaper of the nazi-sozi party in Berlin, saying that: “The NSDAP is the German Left. We despise bourgeois nationalism.”
In 1927, Hitler was quatoed as saying: “We are socialists, we are enemies of today’s capitalistic economic system for the exploitation of the economically weak, with its unfair salaries, with its unseemly evaluation of a human being according to wealth and prosperity instead of responsibility and performance, and we are determined to destroy this system under all conditions.”
Obviously Hayek is right. There are two types of socialism: national socialism and international socialism. They fought each other after Operation Barbarossa, but they were still socialist, both of them. While international socialism (USSR-style) confiscated property rights officially, national socialism (Hitler-style) pretended that property rights could remain in the hands of the legitimate owners of the businesses – all the while appointing bureaucrats empowered to tell these owners how to run their business! Economically speaking, the only difference between the two systems is a semantic one, not a real one.
mastermind
19 June 2010
You know what? Nazism is associated with evil because of things totally unrelated with its purported stances on economy. Whatever those stances were they were not the driving force of Nazism and certainly it wasn’t because of general views on property that 6 million Jews got exterminated and countless millions more killed, but because of racial views of nazism. And that’s what nazism is associated with. I bet Hitler had views on astronomy too. He may have been an amateur astronomer, but you certainly wouldn’t say Nazism is Astronomy, thereby dumping your hate for astronomers to the same pile with world’s trademark evil-doers. That’s just lame.
afrikaner liberal
25 June 2010
Although I agree with mastermind that Nazism is not associated with evil because of its economic policies, I can see how some might think otherwise. Nevertheless, I still think equating Nazism with our modern conception of socialism is fundamentally incorrect. Hitler himself said “I absolutely insist on protecting private property … we must encourage private initiative.” (Hitler, A.; transl. Norman Cameron, R. H. Stevens; intro. H. R. Trevor-Roper (2000). “March 24, 1942″. Hitler’s Table Talk, 1941–1944: His Private Conversations. Enigma Books. pp. 162–163.) Hitler endorsed Darwinist philosophies and it would seem that he would view competition and private control as healthy. Furthermore, the Nazis strongly opposed communists (and the German communist party). In fact, he fed the prejudice that Jewish people were communists by noting that many of the revolutionaries that tried to establish the Bavarian Soviet Republic in 1918-1919 were Jewish (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bavarian_Soviet_Republic). His party was strongly opposed to communism and, in fact, he put communists in concentration camps after he rose to power.
But assuming you’re right, that Nazism is somehow equivalent to modern socialism, then socialism is sure is sound economic policy. As it states in wikipedia (the original source is Evans, The Third Reich in Power, 1933–1939, Penguin Press, 2005, p. 409): Historian Richard Evans reports that before the outbreak of World War II in 1939, the German economy ‘had recovered from the Depression faster than its counterparts in other countries. Germany’s foreign debt had been stabilized, interest rates had fallen to half their 1932 level, the stock exchange had recovered from the Depression, the gross national product had risen by 81 per cent over the same period . . . Inflation and unemployment had been conquered.’
Ivan
21 July 2010
Mastermind,
I suppose, judging by your avatar, that you do not associate Comrades Lenin and Stalin (and Chairman Mao as well) with the evil the same way you associate Hitler. Every one of these communist leaders killed many more people than Hitler ever did. The idea of genocide over the entire chosen ethnic or a religious group was invented by the communists a long before Hitler came into power. Stalin killed 6 million of Ukrainians during 1932-33 in order to collectivize the economy. He killed additional 4-5 millions during the purges in the late 1930s. The very idea of putting people in concentration camps was invented by the Bolsheviks in the early 1920s, again a long before Hitler. The idea of killing biologically “unfit” by the poisonous gas in a gas chamber was widely advertised by a great “humanitarian” George Bernard Shaw, again a long before Hitler came to power.
If you read the book “The Origins of Totalitarianism” by Hanna Arendt you will see that terror is a consisting part of any totalitarian state, being it communist or fascist, and that scapegoat always had to be found. In an interview published in the early 1920s HItler openly admits that he had chosen Jews as scapegoats for a purely pragmatical reasons, since the widely spread anti-semitism in Europe was a fertile ground for that kind. He said something to the effect: “We were thinking hardly, and we finally concluded that Jews were the most appropriate choice”
Also, you should really read The Road to Serfdom where you can find a pretty detailed account of how the same ideas that triumphed in Germany in the 1930s were on the rise in other parts of Europe as well, although they never “matured” in a complete destruction of society and democratic institutions there as they did in Germany. German nationalism and its final and the most malignant form, Nazism, were inexorably linked with socialism from beginning to end. The very idea that is necessary to conquer other countries (to get the “living space”) would be impossible had not Hitler been the pupil of socialistic understanding of economy and Fihtean “closed trading state”. If he had understood that free trade creates wealth irrespective of how much land and natural resources do you have, he would have been able to understand that you can survive even without much natural resources and land. If you understand economy as a zero-sum-game, it would be always a natural thing for you to propose some sort of a social engineering, to “eliminate unfit”, to apply this or that form of eugenics (American progressives, as well as Communists went much further than Nazis in eugenics). Bernard Shaw’s chilling statement about the killing the unfit in gas chambers was motivated by the pure humanitarian reasons stemmed from the wrong understanding of economy. Nazis were simply the good students of the modern, progressive thought and practice of the 20th century.
mastermind
5 August 2010
Ivan, please study a bit on communism, so you don’t get destracted by talking about Stalin and Mao when (if) in fact you wish to speak about communism.
mastermind
5 August 2010
Again, finding socialist roots in Hitler’s evil is as misplaced as anything can be (explained above already). Funny, how anti-communists always end up prefering Hitler and then stretch their minds to make Soviet Union worst than Hitler’s Germany. Now, we learn that he wasn’t nationalist at all, but pretended to be for socialist reasons behind. Give yourself a break.
afrikaner liberal
14 August 2010
Dear Ivan,
Several things:
- Concentration camps were “invented” by the English in the Boere wars. Admittedly, these weren’t nearly as cruel and efficient as the concentration camps used by Hitler, but many people did die in those concentration camps due to starvation and disease.
- Hitler idolized British imperialism and wanted to emulate the domination exerted by the Britain over her colonies (especially India). He believed Germans were just better than other “races” and he wanted Germans to dominate Europe because they’re better than other Europeans. I don’t think it had much to do with economics.
- Again, Hitler wanted to protect private property. Hitler teamed up with a socialist party to win enough votes to be elected chancellor. That’s the only reason “socialist” is even in his party’s name.
I suggest you search for “The Nazis A Warning from History” on youtube.
afrikaner liberal
14 August 2010
He wasn’t elected chancellor… I mean to win more seats in parliament
afrikaner liberal
14 August 2010
“The small number of party members were quickly won over to Hitler’s political beliefs. In an attempt to make the party more broadly appealing to larger segments of the population, the DAP was renamed on February 24, 1920 to the National Socialist German Workers’ Party.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Workers%27_Party
liberal2
28 October 2010
“Soviet Union on the other hand, was inclusive allowing it to everyone without regard to any differences.”
—>
mastermind, please study a bit on the soviet union!! This is stupidity, first proclaiming that Stalin and Mao were not communists, and then defending their systems which really aren’t worth defending.
What you say is not true at all. Welfare in the soviet union was exclusively for those who were lucky members of the ruling party, not for “everyone”, let alone those that were “enemies of the state”. Millions of people were put into Gulags or simply shot because they belonged to the wrong ethnicity, group etc. In China, 30 Million people starved, where later even the government said that it was 30% forces of nature, and 70% human error.
Now I am from Germany and not from Russia (and the USSR was much worse than the GDR), but I can give you a great example of “welfare for everyone without regard to any differences”: A tour guide in the Stasi prison Hohenschönhausen in Berlin, who was imprisoned for two years after giving an interview in the west german radio (at the time when the border still was open). His teachers identified his voice (they were stasi agents) and he was taken from his exams straight to prison. When he was released, he was never allowed to finish school or even get a drivers license. Those were only awarded to “trustworthy” people.
tl;dr: Welfare in the soviet union and “communist” states –> only if you happen to think and act as the leaders want you to.
mastermind
28 October 2010
liberal2, not only have I studied it at length, but I also have family and friends who lived in the Soviet Union in addition to my studies. You label Stalin all over the place. If you actually studied it you would know that since Stalin died in 1953 (yes, 1953 – Stalin is dead, you should have heard by now), Soviet Union rapidly destalinized and welfare actually worked. That was like, 60 years ago and today’s pensioners and their chidlren in their 50′s look with praise at the lives they led in the Soviet Union. I know first-hand, I know second-hand. Everyone had housing, everyone had a job, everyone had full access to medical aid and schooling and there were no gradations in that, and no one was a slave to the credit, which is just a blown bubble of the speculative capital (non-existant, if you will). I too was born and raised in the communist state. Same here, no need to repeat.
liberal2
29 October 2010
mastermind – I agree with you that the USSR got much better after ’53. I referred mainly to the Stalin era because that was at the same time as Hitler ruled (even some years longer).
The majority might very well have lived a good life in the Soviet Union.
However, it was still a totalitarian dictatorship. The majority in Hitler’s Germany profited from his welfare reforms. But that doesn’t make him good (and of course, I have relatives who lived in the third Reich – and not all of their memories are negative. Sometimes the discussion starts again in German media, often in forms like “But Hitler built the autobahn, not everything was bad”).
Political opposition and free speech were not allowed until the Soviet Union fell, and those who criticized were still hunted down (you could, of course, argue that their actions were illegal under soviet law, but I think – morally – it should not be possible to alienate basic rights). I think the right way to evaluate a state/system is by looking at how it treats the weakest and most “unpopular” citizens, and both Hitler (Jews, communists, and everyone outside of Germany who was not German) and all the totalitarian “communist” leaders (mainly political (“public”) enemies (of the revolution), capitalists and those who supposedly belonged to any of these groups) fail this test.
As said before, however, this does not mean that everything was bad. Especially in the communist dictatorships (at least some), social rights became very important, which is a good thing. Our modern, social-liberal European political systems are just results from the try to have freedom and sufficient social rights in one system (and they succeed quite well, even from a liberal perspective).
My conclusion still stands. As Noam Chomsky once said, “If we don’t believe in free expression for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all”. And the people the Soviet Union despised (even in the later years), we not treated too well.
mastermind
30 October 2010
Sorry, but you will have to try harder if you want to imply communism=nazism, because as said before nazism was exclusive welfare-wise ethnically, while socialist states were inclusive welfare-wise for all. I hope that much can be easily understood, and this whole topic revolves about absurd statements of “great liberals”.
vebiltdervan
25 January 2011
Two or three quick points here:
1) If those of you who quote Hayek semi-religiously will trouble to read ‘The Road to Serfdom’, you will discover that he explicitly refers to ‘socialism’ in its original economic sense: i.e., where the state controls the means of production & consequently runs a planned economy. It is not historically accurate to claim that in the economy of Hitler’s Third Reich, the state removed the means of production from the corporations. Rather, IG Farben & other German corporations retained ownership of their factories. Yes, there was planning of the economy, as Hitler’s economic ministers, especially Speer in 1944 & ’45, worked hand-in-glove with the corporations, but this is what happens in every modern wartime economy, including the UK & US during WWII. It does not make the Nazi economy = a socialist economy, in the original sense of that term. Hayek was mistaken about this, & if he had waited for & paid attention to historical information on the Nazi wartime economy (with its IG Farbens, etc.), he would have/should have realized as much. But he was not writing ‘Serfdom’ as an economic study, but rather as a political pamphlet (his description). It suited his politics to equate Nazism & socialism, & this false claim still suits most politicians on the right today.
2. By the time ‘Serfdom’ reached its 1976 reissue, Hayek found it necessary, in a new introduction, to differentiate his usage of the term ‘socialism’ from its more-recently-acquired meaning of democratic welfare state policies. He concluded, without providing any evidence, that ‘welfare state socialism’ also leads down the same road to totalitarianism as true economic socialism, albeit at a slower rate. Given the last 50-60 years of modern history in most Western nations, excluding the U.S., this is very highly debatable, virtually to the point of being laughable. Canada & the UK & France & Germany, etc., etc., are not now totalitarian states.
3. Yes, fascism & communism are indeed both totalitarian systems. But the important consideration, if you hold the slightest belief in Hayek’s contention that the road to totalitarianism is paved initially by good intentions (& I think most of us do), is that because fascism ≠ socialism, the road to a fascist totalitarian state & the road to a communist totalitarian state are not the same roads. They are initiated by different sorts of initial good intentions. And consequently, I would argue that for America (or indeed for virtually any other nation now), the communist model has been struck down by history (what nation today wants to emulate N. Korea or Cuba?—because China, Vietnam, etc. no longer have any connection with communism other than bearing the obsolescent brand name), & therefore the only true threat of descending into totalitarism lies in taking the right-wing road that leads to fascism. Glenn Beck is not saving America from the totalitarianism that lies down the socialist road; no, he represents the good intentions that if followed pave the way toward fascist totalitarianism.
southernwolfnet
12 May 2012
re but you will have to try harder
‘There is abundant evidence, what is more, that the Nazi leaders believed they were socialists and that anti-Nazi socialists often accepted that claim. In Mein Kampf (1926) Hitler accepted that National Socialism was a derivative of Marxism. The point was more bluntly made in private conversations. “The whole of National Socialism is based on Marx,” he told Hermann Rauschning. Rauschning later reported the remark in Hitler Speaks (1939), but by that time the world was at war and too busy to pay much attention to it. Goebbels too thought himself a socialist. Five days before the German invasion of the Soviet Union, in June 1941, he confided in his diary that “real socialism” would be established in that country after a Nazi victory, in place of Bolshevism and Czarism.’
http://jonjayray.tripod.com/watson.html
See also http://marxwords.blogspot.com/