Stephen Hicks discusses Marx’s account of the necessary economic development stages in scientific socialism. This is from Part 13 of his Philosophy of Education course.
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Following up on an earlier post contrasting modernism with pre-modernism, I here contrast post-modernism to both.
Postmodernism as a philosophical system is defined by means of its characteristic claims in the five major branches of philosophy: metaphysics, epistemology, human nature, ethics, and politics. Postmodernism as a historical movement is defined by the time of its formulation and most vigorous activity.
[This chart is from Chapter 1 of Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault (Scholargy Publishing, 2004). The chapter from which it is excerpted can be downloaded as a PDF at the Explaining Postmodernism page. The full book is also available at Amazon.com.]
[This is Section 10 of Nietzsche and the Nazis.]
10. Authoritarianism, not liberal democracy
So far we have three major themes in the Nazi Program: collectivism, socialism, and nationalism. The next question is: How do the Nazis believe this is to be achieved?
As early as 1920 the Nazis are clear that they are no friends of democracy, liberalism, or republicanism. They favor strong authoritarianism and centralized power.
Point 23 calls for censorship and government control of all newspapers.
Point 24 suggests limitations on religions that do not fit the Nazis’ goals.
Point 25 calls for centralization and unconditional power: “we demand the creation of a strong central power in Germany. A central political parliament should possess unconditional authority over the entire Reich, and its organization in general.”
These points in combination with the economically socialist points earlier are to give the government total control over all aspects of society.
Throughout the 1920s the Nazis are unapologetic about wanting to eliminate liberalism, democracy, and republicanism. Goebbels for example put it bluntly and publicly: “Never do the people rule themselves. This madness has been invented by liberalism. Behind its concept of the sovereignty of the people hide the most corrupt rogues, who do not want to be recognized.”[19]
In Mein Kampf, Hitler agreed entirely: “There must be no majority decisions.” Instead, “the decisions will be made by one man.”[20] So, Goebbels continued, “We shall create a power-group with which we can conquer this state. And then ruthlessly and brutally, using the State’s prerogatives, we shall enforce our will and our programme.” Again from Goebbels:
“History has seen repeatedly how a young, determined minority has overthrown the rule of a corrupt and rotten majority, and then used for a time the State and its means of power in order to bring about by dictatorship … and force the conditions necessary to complete the conquest and to impose new ideas.”[21]
The Nazis were very clear from the outset what they were in favor of, what they opposed, and how they planned to exercise power once they achieved it: socialism, nationalism, racial identity and purification—and a strong, centralized power to make it happen.
References
[19] Goebbels 1929, in Mosse ed., 1966, p. 105.
[20] Hitler 1925, p. 449.
[21] Goebbels 1927, quoted in Irving 1999, p. 117.
[This post can also be downloaded as a PDF at the Nietzsche and the Nazis page.]
[This is Appendix 3 of Nietzsche and the Nazis. Sources for the quotations are at the end of this post.]
Appendix 3: Quotations on German anti-Semitism
Martin Luther (1483-1546): “The Jews deserve to hang on gallows, seven times higher than ordinary thieves.” And: “We ought to take revenge on the Jews and kill them.”[189]
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804): The Jews are by nature “sharp dealers” who are “bound together by superstition.” Their “immoral and vile” behavior in commerce shows that they “do not aspire to civic virtue,” for “the spirit of usury holds sway amongst them.” They are “a nation of swindlers” who benefit only “from deceiving their host’s culture.”[190]
Kant: “The euthanasia of Judaism is the pure moral religion.”[191]
Johann Herder (1744-1803) quoting Kant from his lectures on practical philosophy: “Every coward is a liar; Jews, for example, not only in business, but also in common life.”[192]
Johann Fichte (1762-1814): “A mighty state stretches across almost all the nations of Europe, hostile in intent and in constant strife with all others … this is Jewry.” Also: “As for giving them [the Jews] civil rights, I for one see no remedy but that their heads should be all cut off in one night and replaced with others in which there would not be one single Jewish idea.”[193]
Ernst Moritz Arndt (1769-1860, professor at University of Bonn). Arndt was a poet, a historian, a deeply-religious Lutheran, and post-Kantian philosophical idealist whose hero was Arminius, who defeated the Romans in 9 C.E., thus saving the pure German soul from “contamination” by Latin races. According to Arndt, the Jews were “a rotten and degenerate race” that had “evil and worthless drives and desires.”[194]
G. W. F. Hegel (1770-1831): Germany cannot assimilate the Jews because the Jews live an “animal existence that can only be secured at someone else’s expense.” Also: “Spirit alone recognizes spirit. They [the Jews] saw in Jesus only the man … for He was only one like themselves, and they felt themselves to be nothing. The Jewish multitude was bound to wreck His attempt to give them the consciousness of something divine, for faith in something divine, something great, cannot make its home in a dunghill.”[195]
Johann Fries (1773-1843), professor at University of Heidelberg: Fries was a Kantian logician, a disciple of Fichte, and influential among student nationalist societies. He called the Jews “rotten,” “worthless cheats,” “bloodsuckers,” a “diseased people,” argued they should be required to wear special signs indicating to others their race, and called for their “extermination.”[196]
Karl Marx (1818-1883): “Let us consider the actual, worldly Jew—not the Sabbath Jew, as Bauer does, but the everyday Jew. Let us not look for the secret of the Jew in his religion, but let us look for the secret of his religion in the real Jew. What is the secular basis of Judaism? Practical need, self-interest. What is the worldly religion of the Jew? Huckstering. What is his worldly God? Money. Very well then! Emancipation from huckstering and money, consequently from practical, real Jewry, would be the self-emancipation of our time. … We recognize in Jewry, therefore, a general present-time-oriented anti-social element, an element which through historical development—to which in this harmful respect the Jews have zealously contributed—has been brought to its present high level, at which it must necessarily dissolve itself. In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Jewry.”[197]
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900): “I have not met a German yet who was well disposed toward the Jews; and however unconditionally all the cautious and politically-minded repudiated real anti-Semitism, even this caution and policy are not directed against the species of this feeling itself but only against its dangerous immoderation.”[198]
Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) in 1925: “I am convinced that I am acting as the agent of our Creator. By fighting off the Jews, I am doing the Lord’s work.” And in 1931: “The Jewish problem is a highly complex matter … our ideology is opposed to the interests of the Chosen Race in that we abominate their dance around the Golden Calf. For racial and financial reasons the Jews are basically opposed to communism.”[199]
Hitler: “Anti-Semitism is a useful revolutionary expedient.”[200]
Sidney Hook (1902-1989), a socialist philosopher: “anti-Semitism was rife in almost all varieties of socialism.”[201]
References
[189] Luther, quoted in Murphy 1999, p. 9.
[190] Kant, quoted in Weiss 1996, p. 67.
[191] Kant, Streit der Fakultaten, in Werke 11:321, quoted in Paul Lawrence Rose, Revolutionary Antisemitism from Kant to Wagner (Princeton, 1990), p. 96.
[192] Herder, quoted in Mack, 2003, p. 5.
[193] Fichte, quoted in Weiss 1996, pp. 72 and 68.
[194] Arndt, quoted in Weiss 1996, p. 74.
[195] Hegel, quoted in Weiss 1996, pp. 67 and 66.
[196] Fries, quoted in Weiss 1996, p. 74.
[197] Marx, “On The Jewish Question,” http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/jewish-question/. Viewed September 17, 2007.
[198] Nietzsche, BGE 251.
[199] Hitler, in interview with Richard Breiting, 1931, published in Edouard Calic, ed., “Second Interview with Hitler,” Secret Conversations with Hitler: The Two Newly-Discovered 1931 Interviews. New York: John Day Co., 1971, p. 86.
[200] Hitler, in Hermann Rauschning, The Voice of Destruction: Hitler Speaks, as quoted in George Seldes, The Great Thoughts. New York: Ballantine, p. 186.
[201] Hook, “Home Truths About Marx,” Commentary (September 1978) reprinted in Marxism and Beyond. Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1983, p. 117.
[This post can also be downloaded as a PDF at the Nietzsche and the Nazis page.]
[This is Section 8 of Nietzsche and the Nazis.]
8. Economic socialism, not capitalism
The second theme of the Program is a stress upon socialism and a strong rejection of capitalism.
Numerically, socialism is the most emphasized theme in the Nazi Program, for over half of the Program’s twenty-five points—fourteen out of the twenty-five, to be exact—itemize economically socialist demands.
Point 11 calls for the abolition of all income gained by loaning money at interest.
Point 12 demands the confiscation of all profits earned by German businesses during World War I.
Point 13 demands the nationalization of all corporations.
Point 14 demands profit-sharing in large industrial enterprises.
Point 15 demands the generous development of state-run old-age insurance.
Point 16 calls for the immediate socialization of the huge department stores.
And so on.
So strong was the Nazi party’s commitment to socialism that in 1921 the party entered into negotiations to merge with another socialist party, the German Socialist Party. The negotiations fell though, but the economic socialism remained a consistent Nazi theme through the 1920s and 30s.
For example, here is Adolf Hitler in a speech in 1927: “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 property instead of responsibility and performance, and we are all determined to destroy this system under all conditions.”[10]
Even more strongly, Josef Goebbels hated capitalism and urged socialism. Dr. Josef Goebbels was perhaps the most brilliant and educated of all the Nazi politicians. Once the Nazis came to power he was to be one of the most powerful of the very top Nazis—perhaps number two or three after Hitler himself. But Goebbels’ commitment to National Socialist principles began much earlier. He received a wide-ranging classical education by attending five universities in Germany, eventually receiving a Ph.D. in literature and philosophy from Heidelberg University in 1921. During his graduate student days he absorbed and agreed with much of the writings of communists Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Damning those he called “the money pigs of capitalist democracy,”[11] Goebbels in speeches and pamphlets regularly declaimed that “Money has made slaves of us.”[12] “Money,” he argued, “is the curse of mankind. It smothers the seed of everything great and good. Every penny is sticky with sweat and blood.” And in language that could be right out of the writings of Karl Marx, Goebbels believed fervently: “The worker in a capitalist state—and that is his deepest misfortune—is no longer a living human being, a creator, a maker. He has become a machine. A number, a cog in the machine without sense or understanding. He is alienated from what he produces.”[13]
The Nazi solution, then, is strong socialism.[14] The state should control the economy, organizing its production and distribution in the collective interest.[15]
References
[10] May 1, 1927; quoted in Toland 1976, p. 306.
[11] Quoted in Orlow 1969, p. 87.
[12] Goebbels 1929, in Mosse ed., 1966, p. 107.
[13] Goebbels 1932, “Those Damned Nazis” pamphlet.
[14] See Appendix 2 for more quotations from Nazi leaders on the socialism of National Socialism.
[15] This explains why the Nazi SA “staged joint rallies with the Communists and planned campaigns to win over the KDP members well into 1929 and 1930” (Orlow 1969, p. 210).
[This post can also be downloaded as a PDF at the Nietzsche and the Nazis page.]
[This is Appendix 2 of Nietzsche and the Nazis. Sources for the quotations are at the end of this post.]
Appendix 2: Quotations on Nazi socialism and fascism
Socialism against individualism
“National socialism is the determination to create a new man. There will no longer exist any individual arbitrary will, nor realms in which the individual belongs to himself. The time of happiness as a private matter is over.”
—Adolf Hitler[137]
“The concept of personal liberties of the individual as opposed to the authority of the state had to disappear; it is not to be reconciled with the principle of the nationalistic Reich. There are no personal liberties of the individual which fall outside of the realm of the state and which must be respected by the state. The member of the people, organically connected with the whole community, has replaced the isolated individual; he is included in the totality of the political people and is drawn into the collective action. There can no longer be any question of a private sphere, free of state influence, which is sacred and untouchable before the political unity. The constitution of the nationalistic Reich is therefore not based upon a system of inborn and inalienable rights of the individual.”
—Ernst Rudolf Huber,[138] official spokesman for the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, 1939
“[O]ur German language has a word which in a magnificent way denotes conduct based on this spirit: doing one’s duty [Pflichterfüllung]—which means serving the community instead of contenting oneself. We have a word for the basic disposition which underlies conduct of this kind in contrast to egoism and selfishness—idealism. By ‘idealism’ we mean only the ability of the individual to sacrifice himself for the whole, for his fellow men.”
—Adolf Hitler,[139] 1925
“The State must act as the guardian of a millennial future in the face of which the wishes and the selfishness of the individual must appear as nothing and submit.”
—Adolf Hitler[140]
“[S]ocialism is sacrificing the individual to the whole.”
—Joseph Goebbels[141]
“THE COMMON INTEREST BEFORE SELF-INTEREST.”
—NDSAP Program, Point 24, 1920
“We must rouse in our people the unanimous wish for power in this sense, together with the determination to sacrifice on the altar of patriotism, not only life and property, but also private views and preferences in the interests of the common welfare.”
—Friedrich von Bernhardi,[142] 1912
Socialist economics
“To put it quite clearly: we have an economic programme. Point No. 13 in that programme demands the nationalisation of all public companies, in other words socialisation, or what is known here as socialism. … the basic principle of my Party’s economic programme should be made perfectly clear and that is the principle of authority … the good of the community takes priority over that of the individual. But the State should retain control; every owner should feel himself to be an agent of the State; it is his duty not to misuse his possessions to the detriment of the State or the interests of his fellow countrymen. That is the overriding point. The Third Reich will always retain the right to control property owners. If you say that the bourgeoisie is tearing its hair over the question of private property, that does not affect me in the least. Does the bourgeoisie expect some consideration from me? … The bourgeois press does me damage too and would like to consign me and my movement to the devil. You are, after all a representative of the bourgeoisie … your press thinks it must continuously distort my ideas. … We do not intend to nail every rich Jew to the telegraph poles on the Munich-Berlin road.”
—Adolf Hitler,[143] to R. Breiting, “bourgeois” newspaper editor, 1931
“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 property instead of responsibility and performance, and we are all determined to destroy this system under all conditions.”
—Adolf Hitler,[144] 1927 speech
On “the money pigs of capitalist democracy”: “Money has made slaves of us. “Money is the curse of mankind. It smothers the seed of everything great and good. Every penny is sticky with sweat and blood.”
—Joseph Goebbels,[145] 1929
“The worker in a capitalist state—and that is his deepest misfortune—is no longer a living human being, a creator, a maker. He has become a machine. A number, a cog in the machine without sense or understanding. He is alienated from what he produces.”
—Joseph Goebbels,[146] 1932 pamphlet
“‘Private property’ as conceived under the liberalistic economic order … represented the right of the individual to manage and to speculate with inherited or acquired property as he pleased, without regard for the general interests … German socialism had to overcome this ‘private,’ that is, unrestrained and irresponsible view of property. All property is common property. The owner is bound by the people and the Reich to the responsible management of his goods. His legal position is only justified when he satisfies this responsibility to the community.”
—Ernst Rudolf Huber,[147] official Nazi Party spokesman, 1939
National Socialism, according to some later commentators
“Hitler was never a socialist.”
—Ian Kershaw[148]
“Bastard movements like the National Socialism (Nazism) of twentieth-century Germany and Austria …, save for the bare fact that they enforced central control of social policy, had nothing of socialism in them.”
—Margaret Cole,[149] under “Socialism,” in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy
“Stalinism is a pathology of socialism, Hitlerism being the apposite example for capitalism.”
—Robert Heilbroner,[150] popular socialist author, 1980
“If there is one thing all Fascists and National Socialists agreed on, it was their hostility to capitalism.”
—Eugen Weber,[151] historian of fascism
“[A]nti-Semitism was rife in almost all varieties of socialism.”
—Sidney Hook,[152] socialist philosopher
“It is significant that the most important ancestors of National Socialism—Fichte, Rodbertus, and Lassalle—are at the same time acknowledged fathers of socialism.”
—F. A. Hayek,[153] 1944
Socialism and authoritarianism
“The party is all-embracing. It rules our lives in all their breadth and depth. We must therefore develop branches of the party in which the whole of individual life will be reflected. Each activity and each need of the individual will thereby be regulated by the party as the representative of the general good. There will be no license, no free space, in which the individual belongs to himself. This is Socialism—not such trifles as the private possession of the means of production. Of what importance is that if I range men firmly within a discipline they cannot escape? Let them then own land or factories as much as they please. The decisive factor is that the State, through the party, is supreme over them, regardless whether they are owners or workers. All that, you see, is unessential. Our Socialism goes far deeper.”
—Adolf Hitler[154]
“Our present political world-view, current in Germany, is based in general on the idea that creative, culture-creating force must indeed be attributed to the state.”
—Adolf Hitler,[155] 1925
“The first foundation for the creation of authority is always provided by popularity.”
—Adolf Hitler[156]
“The advantage of … an unwritten constitution over the formal constitution is that the basic principles do not become rigid but remain in a constant, living movement. Not dead institutions but living principles determine the nature of the new constitutional order.”
—Ernst Rudolf Huber,[157] official spokesman for the National Socialist German Workers’ (Nazi) Party, 1939
Against capitalism
“We German National Socialists have recognized that not international solidarity frees the peoples from the ties of international capital, but the organized national force. …The National Socialist German Workers’ Party asks you all to come … to a GIANT DEMONSTRATION against the continued cheating of our people by the Jewish agents of the international world stock-exchange capital.”
—Nazi Poster,[158] 1921
“It is not to save capitalism that we fight in Russia … It is for a revolution of our own. … If Europe were to become once more the Europe of bankers, of fat corrupt bourgeoisies … we should prefer Communism to win and destroy everything. We would rather have it all blow up than see this rottenness resplendent. Europe fights in Russia because it [i.e., Fascist Europe] is Socialist. …what interests us most in the war is the revolution to follow …The war cannot end without the triumph of Socialist revolution.”
—Leon Degrelle,[159] leading National Socialist figure, speaking on behalf of the Nazi SS in occupied Paris, 1943
“[W]e will do what we like with the bourgeoisie. … We give the orders; they do what they are told. Any resistance will be broken ruthlessly.”
—Adolf Hitler,[160] 1931
“The internal and international criminal gang will either be forced to work or simply exterminated.”
—Adolf Hitler,[161] 1931
“Today I will once more be a prophet. If the international Jewish financiers, inside and outside Europe, succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, then the result will not be the Bolshevisation of the earth, and thus the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe!”
—Adolf Hitler,[162] 1939
Historical roots: Jean-Jacques Rousseau
“Hitler is an outcome of Rousseau.”
—Bertrand Russell,[163] 1945
“Each member of the community gives himself to it at the instant of its constitution, just as he actually is, himself and all his forces, including all goods in his possession.”
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau[164]
“Whoever refuses to obey the general will will be forced to do so by the entire body; this means merely that he will be forced to be free.”
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau[165]
“The political body, therefore, is also a moral being which has a will; and this general will, which tends always to the conservation and well-being of the whole and of each part of it … is, for all members of the state … the rule of what is just or unjust.”
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau[166]
“The State dominates the Nation because it alone represents it.”
—Adolf Hitler[167]
The state “ought to have a universal compulsory force to move and arrange each part in the manner best suited to the whole. Just as nature gives each man an absolute power over all his members, the social compact gives the body politic an absolute power over all its members.” “We grant that each person alienates, by the social compact, only that portion of his power, his goods, and liberty whose use is of consequence to the community; but we must also grant that only the sovereign is the judge of what is of consequence.”
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau[168]
“For us the supreme law of the constitution is: whatever serves the vital interests of the nation is legal.”
—Adolf Hitler,[169] 1931
“A citizen should render to the state all the services he can as soon as the sovereign demands them.”
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau[170]
“I wish to give officials greater discretion. The State’s authority will be increased thereby. I wish to transform the non-political criminal police into a political instrument of the highest State authority.”
—Adolf Hitler,[171] 1931
Historical sources: Karl Marx
“[W]hen I was a worker I busied myself with socialist or, if you like, marxist [sic] literature.”
—Adolf Hitler,[172] 1931
“I have learned a great deal from Marxism, as I do not hesitate to admit. I don’t mean their tiresome social doctrine or the materialist conception of history, or their absurd ‘marginal utility’ theories and so on. But I have learnt from their methods. The difference between them and myself is that I have really put into practice what these peddlers and pen-pushers have timidly begun. The whole of National Socialism is based on it. Look at the workers’ sports clubs, the industrial cells, the mass demonstrations, the propaganda leaflets written specially for the comprehension of masses; all these new methods of political struggle are essentially Marxist in origin. All that I had to do was take over these methods and adapt them to our purpose. I had only to develop logically what Social Democracy repeatedly failed in because of its attempt to realize its evolution within the framework of democracy. National Socialism is what Marxism might have been if it could have broken its absurd and artificial ties with a democratic order.”
— Adolf Hitler[173]
“Besides, there is more that binds us to Bolshevism than separates us from it. There is, above all, genuine, revolutionary feeling, which is alive everywhere in Russia except where there are Jewish Marxists. I have always made allowance for this circumstance, and given orders that former Communists are to be admitted to the party at once. The petit bourgeois Social-Democrat and the trade-union boss will never make a National Socialist, but the Communist always will.”
— Adolf Hitler[174]
“What is the profane basis of Judaism? Practical need, self-interest. What is the worldly cult of the Jew? Huckstering. What is his worldly god? Money. Very well: then in emancipating itself from huckstering and money, and thus from real and practical Judaism, our age would emancipate itself. … We discern in Judaism … a universal antisocial element …
“As soon as society succeeds in abolishing the empirical essence of Judaism—huckstering and its conditions—the Jew becomes impossible … The social emancipation of the Jew is the emancipation of society from Judaism.”
—Karl Marx,[175] “On the Jewish Question,” 1843
“[I]t is quite enough that the scientific knowledge of the danger of Judaism is gradually deepened and that every individual on the basis of this knowledge begins to eliminate the Jew within himself, and I am very much afraid that this beautiful thought originates from none other than a Jew [i.e., Marx].”
—Adolf Hitler[176]
“As I listened to Gottfried Feder’s first lecture about the ‘breaking of interest slavery,’ I knew at once that this was a theoretical truth which would inevitably be of immense importance for the German people. … The development of Germany was much too clear in my eyes for me not to know that the hardest battle would have to be fought, not against hostile nations, but against international capital.
“… Thus, it was the conclusions of Gottfried Feder that caused me to delve into the fundamentals of this field with which I had previously not been very familiar. I began to study again, and now for the first time really achieved an understanding of the content of … Karl Marx’s life effort. Only now did his Kapital become really intelligible to me …”
—Adolf Hitler,[177] 1925
“Hitler admired Stalin, quite properly seeing himself as a mere infant in crime compared to his great exemplar.”
—Doris Lessing[178]
“As National Socialists we see our program in our flag. In the red we see the social idea of the movement.”
—Adolf Hitler,[179] Mein Kampf
“The Nazis were not conservatives. They were radicals, they were revolutionaries, and conservatives in Germany understood this.”
—Thomas Childers,[180] American historian of World War II
Comparing Italian Fascism and German National Socialism
“For Fascism, society is the end, individuals the means, and its whole life consists in using individuals as instruments for its social ends.”
—Alfredo Rocco,[181] founder of Fascist theory, 1925
“Liberalism denied the State in the name of the individual; Fascism reasserts the rights of the State as expressing the real essence of the individual.”
—Benito Mussolini[182]
“The State, in fact, as the universal ethical will, is the creator of right.”
—Benito Mussolini,[183] 1932
“In Fascism the State is not a night-watchman, only occupied with the personal safety of the citizens.”
—Benito Mussolini,[184] 1929
“As regards the Liberal doctrines, the attitude of Fascism is one of absolute opposition both in the political and in the economical field.”
—Benito Mussolini,[185] 1932
“Anti-individualistic, the Fascist conception of life stresses the importance of the State and accepts the individual only insofar as his interests as he coincides with those of the State … . It is opposed to classical liberalism which arose as a reaction to absolutism and exhausted its historical function when the State became the expression of the conscience and will of the people. Liberalism denied the State in the name of the individual; Fascism reasserts the rights of the State as expressing the real essence of the individual … Thus understood, Fascism is totalitarian, and the Fascist State—a synthesis and a unit inclusive of all values—interprets, develops, and potentiates the whole life of a people.”
“The Fascist State, as a higher and more powerful expression of personality, is a force, but a spiritual one. It sums up all the manifestations of the moral and intellectual life of man. Its functions cannot therefore be limited to those of enforcing order and keeping the peace, as the liberal doctrine had it.”
—Benito Mussolini,[186] 1932
“We do not, however, accept a bill of rights which tends to make the individual superior to the State and to empower him to act in opposition to society.”
—Alfredo Rocco,[187] 1925
“All for the State; nothing outside the State; nothing against the State.”
—Benito Mussolini[188]
References
[137] Quoted in Joachim C. Fest, Hitler. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1974, p. 533.
[138] Huber, Verfassungsrecht des grossdeutschen Reiches (Hamburg, 1939), in Raymond E. Murphy, et al., ed., National Socialism, reprinted in Readings on Fascism and National Socialism, selected by Department of Philosophy, University of Colorado. Athens, OH: Swallow Press, 1952, p. 90.
[139] Hitler, “On Idealism and Winning the Masses Over,” in Heinz Lubasz, ed., Fascism: Three Major Regimes. John Wiley & Sons: 1973, pp. 81-82.
[140] Hitler, Mein Kampf, translated by Ralph Manheim. Houghton Mifflin: 1971, p. 404.
[141] Goebbels, Michael, in Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom. New York: Rinehart & Company, 1941, p. 233.
[142] Friedrich von Bernhardi. Germany, the Next War, translated by Allen H. Powles. New York: E. Arnold, 1912, Chapter 5, p. 113.
[143] Hitler, in interview with Richard Breiting, 1931, published in Edouard Calic, ed., “First Interview with Hitler,” Secret Conversations with Hitler: The Two Newly-Discovered 1931 Interviews. New York: John Day Co., 1971, pp. 31-35.
[144] Hitler, May 1, 1927; quoted in Toland 1976, p. 306.
[145] Goebbels, quoted in Orlow 1969, p. 87. And Goebbels 1929, in Mosse ed., 1966, p. 107.
[146] Goebbels 1932, “Those Damned Nazis” pamphlet.
[147] Huber, Verfassungsrecht des grossdeutschen Reiches. (Hamburg, 1939) in Raymond E. Murphy, et al., ed., National Socialism, reprinted in Readings on Fascism and National Socialism, selected by Dept. of Philosophy, University of Colorado. Athens, OH: Swallow Press, 1952, p. 91.
[148] Kershaw, Hitler: 1889-1936 Hubris. New York: Norton, 1999, p. 448.
[149] Cole, “Socialism,” Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Paul Edwards. New York: Macmillan and Free Press, 1967. Vol. 7, pp. 467-70.
[150] Heilbroner, Marxism: For and Against. New York: Norton, 1980, p. 169.
[151] Weber, Varieties of Fascism. D. Van Nostrand, 1964, p. 47.
[152] Hook, “Home Truths About Marx,” Commentary (September 1978), reprinted in Marxism and Beyond. Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1983, p. 117.
[153] Hayek, The Road to Serfdom. University of Chicago Press, 1944/1994, pp. 184-85.
[154] Hitler, quoted in Hermann Rauschning, The Voice of Destruction. New York: Putnam, 1940, p. 191.
[155] Hitler, Mein Kampf, p. 382.
[156] Hitler, Mein Kampf, p. 518.
[157] Huber, Verfassungsrecht, p. 63.
[158] Nazi poster/handbill, in Mein Kampf. New York: Reynal & Hitchcock, 1941, Appendix, p. 541.
[159] Degrelle, 1943. See Eugen Weber, Varieties of Fascism. D. Van Nostrand, 1964, p. 47. Degrelle was “a leading National Socialist figure, highly regarded by Hitler and by Himmler, speaking for the SS who would later publish and distribute the long speech, with the most revolutionary statements carefully italicized.”
[160] Hitler, interview with Breiting, p. 36.
[161] Hitler, interview with Breiting, p. 86.
[162] Hitler, speaking in the Reichstag on January 30, 1939. http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/genocide/hitler_speech_2.shtml
[163] Russell, A History of Western Philosophy. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1945, p. 685.
[164] Rousseau, The Social Contract (1762), translated by Donald Cress. Hackett, 1987. Book 1, Section 9.
[165] Rousseau, The Social Contract , Book 1, Section 7.
[166] Rousseau, A Discourse on Political Economy, in Discourse on Political Economy; and, The Social Contract, translated by Christopher Betts. Oxford University Press, 1994, p. 7.
[167] Hitler, quoted in Albert Jay Nock, Our Enemy the State (1935). Reprinted by Libertarian Review Foundation (New York, 1989), p. 10.
[168] Rousseau, The Social Contract, Book 2, Section 4.
[169] Hitler, interview with Breiting, p. 86.
[170] Rousseau, The Social Contract , Book 2, Section 4.
[171] Hitler, interview with Breiting, p. 86.
[172] Hitler, interview with Breiting, p. 58.
[173] Hitler, quoted Rauschning, p. 186.
[174] Hitler, quoted in Rauschning, p. 131.
[175] Marx, “On the Jewish Question,” in Robert Tucker, The Marx-Engels Reader. Second edition. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1978, pp. 48, 52.
[176] Hitler, quoted in Julius Carlebach, Karl Marx and the Radical Critique of Judaism, pp. 355-356; see also Praeger and Telushkin, Why the Jews? New York: Simon and Schuster, 1983, pp. 138-139.
[177] Hitler, Mein Kampf, pp. 213, 215.
[178] Lessing, Walking in Shade. Harper Collins, 1997, p. 262.
[179] Hitler, Main Kampf. New York: Reynal & Hitchcock, 1941, p. 737.
[180] Thomas Childers, “Lecture 5: The Nazi Breakthrough.” A History of Hitler’s Empire, 2nd ed., lecture series published by The Teaching Company, Chantilly, VA, 2001, minutes 5-6.
[181] Rocco, “The Political Doctrine of Fascism” (address delivered at Perugia, August 30, 1925), reprinted in Readings on Fascism and National Socialism, selected by Deptartment of Philosophy, University of Colorado. Athens, OH: Swallow Press, 1952, p. 35.
[182] In Charles F. Delzell, ed., Mediterranean Fascism: 1919-1945. New York: Harper & Row, 1970, p. 94.
[183] Mussolini, “The Doctrine of Fascism: Fundamental Ideas,” Enciclopedia Italiana, 1932. Reprinted in Heinz Lubasz, ed., Fascism: Three Major Regimes. John Wiley & Sons: 1973, p. 41.
[184] Mussolini, “The Doctrine of Fascism: Fundamental Ideas,” p. 21.
[185] Mussolini, “The Doctrine of Fascism: Fundamental Ideas,” Enciclopedia Italiana, 1932. Reprinted in Readings on Fascism and National Socialism, p. 18.
[186] Mussolini, “The Doctrine of Fascism: Fundamental Ideas,” in Delzell, ed., 1970, pp. 93-94, 95.
[187] Rocco, “The Political Doctrine of Fascism,” p. 36.
[188] Mussolini, quoted in Ortega y Gasset, The Revolt of the Masses. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1993, p. 122.
[This post can also be downloaded as a PDF at the Nietzsche and the Nazis page.]
[This is Appendix 1 of Nietzsche and the Nazis.]
36. Appendix 1: NSDAP Party Program
Program of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party
The Program of the German Workers’ Party is a limited program. Its leaders have no intention, once its aims have been achieved, of establishing new ones, merely in order to insure the continued existence of the party by the artificial creations of discontent among the cases.
1. We demand, on the basis of the right of national self-determination, the union of all Germans in a Greater Germany.
2. We demand equality for the German nation among other nations, and the revocation of the peace treaties of Versailles and Saint-Germain.
3. We demand land (colonies) to feed our people and to settle our excess population.
4. Only a racial comrade can be a citizen. Only a person of German blood, irrespective of religious denomination, can be a racial comrade. No Jew, therefore, can be a racial comrade.
5. Noncitizens shall be able to live in Germany as guests only, and must be placed under alien legislation.
6. We therefore demand that every public office, no matter of what kind, and no matter whether it be national, state, or local office, be held by none but citizens.
We oppose the corrupting parliamentary custom of making party considerations, and not character and ability, the criterion for appointments to official positions.
7. We demand that the state make it its primary duty to provide a livelihood for its citizens. If it should prove impossible to feed the entire population, the members of foreign nations (noncitizens) are to be expelled from Germany.
8. Any further immigration of non-Germans is to be prevented. We demand that all non-Germans who entered Germany after August 2, 1914, be forced to leave the Reich without delay.
9. All citizens are to possess equal rights and obligations.
10. It must be the first duty of every citizen to perform mental or physical work. Individual activity must not violate the general interest, but must be exercised within the framework of the community, and for the general good.
THEREFORE WE DEMAND
11. The abolition of all income unearned by work and trouble.
BREAK THE SLAVERY OF INTEREST
12. In view of the tremendous sacrifices of life and property imposed by any war on the nation, personal gain from the war must be characterized as a crime against the nation. We therefore demand the total confiscation of all war profits.
13. We demand the nationalization of all business enterprises that have been organized into corporations (trusts).
14. We demand profit-sharing in large industrial enterprises.
15. We demand the generous development of old age insurance.
16. We demand the creation and support of a healthy middle class, and the immediate socialization of the huge department stores and their lease, at low rates, to small tradesmen. We demand that as far as national, state, or municipal purchases are concerned, the utmost consideration be shown to small tradesmen.
17. We demand a land reform suitable to our national needs, and the creation of a law for the expropriation without compensation of land for communal purposes. We demand the abolition of ground rent, and the prohibition of all speculation in land.
18. We demand a ruthless battle against those who, by their activities, injure the general good. Common criminals, usurers, profiteers, etc., are to be punished by death, regardless of faith or race.
19. We demand that Roman law, which serves a materialist world order, be replaced by German law.
20. To open the doors of higher education—and thus to leading positions—to every able and hard-working German, the state must provide for a thorough restructuring of our entire educational system. The curricula of all educational institutions are to be brought into line with the requirements of practical life. As soon as the mind begins to develop, the schools must reach civic thought (citizenship classes). We demand the education, at state expense, of particularly talented children of poor parents, regardless of the latters’ class or occupation.
21. The state must see to it that national health standards are raised. It must do so by protecting mothers and children, by prohibiting child labor, by promoting physical strength through legislation providing for compulsory gymnastic by the greatest possible support for all organizations engaged in the physical training of youth.
22. We demand the abolition of the mercenary army and the creation of a people’s army.
23. We demand legal warfare against intentional political lies and their dissemination through the press. To facilitate the creation of a German press, we demand:
(a) that all editors of, and contributors to, newspapers that appear in the German language be racial comrades;
(b) that no non-German newspaper may appear without the express permission of the government. Such papers may not be printed in the German language;
(c) that non-Germans shall be forbidden by law to hold any financial share in a German newspaper, or to influence it in any way.
We demand that the penalty for violating such a law shall be the closing of the newspapers involved, and the immediate expulsion of the non-Germans involved.
Newspapers which violate the general good are to be banned. We demand legal warfare against those tendencies in art and literature which exert an undermining influence on our national life, and the suppression of cultural events which violate this demand.
24. We demand freedom for all religious denominations, provided they do not endanger the existence of the state, or violate the moral and ethical feelings of the Germanic race.
The party, as such, stands for positive Christianity, without, however, allying itself to any particular denomination. It combats the Jewish-materialistic spirit within and around us, and is convinced that a permanent recovery of our people can be achieved only from within, on the basis of
THE COMMON INTEREST BEFORE SELF-INTEREST
25. To implement all these points, we demand the creation of a strong central power in Germany. A central political parliament should possess unconditional authority over the entire Reich, and its organization in general.
Corporations based on estate and profession should be formed to apply the general legislation passed by that Reich in the various German states.
The leaders of the party promise to do everything that is in their power, and if need be, to risk their very lives, to translate this program into action.
Munich, February 24, 1920.
[This post can also be downloaded as a PDF at the Nietzsche and the Nazis page.]
I am organizing a session for the Association for Private Enterprise Education conference to be held April 11-13, 2010 in Las Vegas, Nevada. The theme is “Reason in Hayek and Rand.”
Here we have two giants of twentieth-century thought, but few comparative studies have been done. So as a start I have chosen Reason as a focusing theme and have solicited papers from several scholars on topics such as the following:
* How does Friedrich Hayek’s account of reason compare to Ayn Rand’s?
* Hayek is more focused on reason’s role in social causation while Rand is more focused on reason as an individual phenomenon. True?
* Is it accurate to say that Hayek is a sociologist of reason while Rand is a philosopher of reason?
* Hayek is an empiricist, broadly speaking, as is Rand, but Hayek’s reason is more Humean while Rand’s is more Aristotelian. True?
* Hayek has been interpreted as being a skeptic about reason and as tending to postmodernism (e.g., by Theodore Burczak). True? And if so, does this put him in direct contrast to Rand, who is a strong anti-skeptic?
* Hayek sometimes seems ambivalent about the relation between reason-based discoveries of social science and normative issues. Rand tightly integrates reason’s descriptive and normative functions. Issue here?
* On socialism: Hayek argues a reason-as-fatal-conceit thesis, while Rand places the blame primarily on an ultimately irrational altruism. Are these interpretations complementary or in conflict?
When the session’s panel is finalized, I’ll post it.
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