Poiltical Ad Appeals to Left's Absolute Terror of Not Being Told How to Live

[hammerofglass]

How many of the Soviet Union's ideals did Stalin realize?

When someone like Stalin makes the nation into a dictatorship and murders millions the socialist project has failed utterly.

When someone like Hitler makes the nation a dictatorship and murders millions the fascist project is succeeding brilliantly.

[Frustration]

It's all about the subordination of the individual to society. There's a selection pressure in effect: the only ideologies called 'socialism' that survived are the ones that didn't fail so spectacularly that they discredited themselves. A number of interpretations of socialism were attempted, and contributed greatly to the most evil of all centuries, the 20th.

[Mickey_Rat15]

How many of the Soviet Union's ideals did Stalin realize?

When someone like Stalin makes the nation into a dictatorship and murders millions the socialist project has failed utterly.

When someone like Hitler makes the nation a dictatorship and murders millions the fascist project is succeeding brilliantly.

That is a enormous dollop of cope. The Bolsheviks were a criminal organization from the start, Stalin was not an aberrstion, he was the refined exemplar of that movement. From the point of view of the Anglosphere liberal tradition, there is nothing to recommend either the Nazis or the Bolsheviks.

[Mickey_Rat15]

I'm just saying the, "Nazis are really left wing" thing is the dumbest thing ever. They're the embodiment of a Far Right party.

I didn't say they were "left wing", I said they were Socialist. They were Socialist within one nation, being not a formal political entity but a 'people'. And they were quite enthusiastic about ridding their society of everyone not within their nation.

In what way were they socialist? Because economically they were very capitalist and massively expanded the power and wealth of big business and privatized most of the assets of the German government. These are things fundamentally antithetical to socialism.

The Nazi Party's 25 point platform included these gems. It is certainly arguable that when given the chance they governed as a criminal gang outside of any ideology, but then so did the Bolsheviks. The Nazis never disavowed theses elements of their official platform.

"7. We demand that the State shall make it its primary duty to provide a livelihood for its citizens. If it should prove impossible to feed the entire population, foreign nationals (non-citizens) must be deported from the Reich.

10. It must be the first duty of every citizen to perform physical or mental work. The activities of the individual must not clash with the general interest, but must proceed within the framework of the community and be for the general good.

We demand therefore:

11. The abolition of incomes unearned by work.

The breaking of the slavery of interest

12. In view of the enormous sacrifices of life and property demanded of a nation by any war, personal enrichment from war must be regarded as a crime against the nation. We demand therefore the ruthless confiscation of all war profits.

13. We demand the nationalization of all businesses which have been formed into corporations (trusts).

14. We demand profit-sharing in large industrial enterprises.

15. We demand the extensive development of insurance for old age.

16. We demand the creation and maintenance of a healthy middle class, the immediate communalizing of big department stores, and their lease at a cheap rate to small traders, and that the utmost consideration shall be shown to all small traders in the placing of State and municipal orders.

17. We demand a land reform suitable to our national requirements, the passing of a law for the expropriation of land for communal purposes without compensation; the abolition of ground rent, and the prohibition of all speculation in land.

18. We demand the ruthless prosecution of those whose activities are injurious to the common interest. Common criminals, usurers, profiteers, etc., must be punished with death, whatever their creed or race.

19. We demand that Roman Law, which serves a materialistic world order, be replaced by a German common law.

20. The State must consider a thorough reconstruction of our national system of education (with the aim of opening up to every able and hard-working German the possibility of higher education and of thus obtaining advancement). The curricula of all educational establishments must be brought into line with the requirements of practical life. The aim of the school must be to give the pupil, beginning with the first sign of intelligence, a grasp of the notion of the State (through the study of civic affairs). We demand the education of gifted children of poor parents, whatever their class or occupation, at the expense of the State.

21. The State must ensure that the nation’s health standards are raised by protecting mothers and infants, by prohibiting child labor, by promoting physical strength through legislation providing for compulsory gymnastics and sports, and by the extensive support of clubs engaged in the physical training of youth.

22. We demand the abolition of the mercenary [i.e. professional] army and the formation of a people’s army.

23. We demand legal warfare on deliberate political mendacity and its dissemination in the press. To facilitate the creation of a German national press we demand:

(a) that all editors of, and contributors to newspapers appearing in the German language must be members of the nation;

(b) that no non-German newspapers may appear without the express permission of the State. They must not be printed in the German language;

(c) that non-Germans shall be prohibited by law from participating financially in or influencing German newspapers, and that the penalty for contravening such a law shall be the suppression of any such newspaper, and the immediate deportation of the non-Germans involved.

The publishing of papers which are not conducive to the national welfare must be forbidden. We demand the legal prosecution of all those tendencies in art and literature which corrupt our national life, and the suppression of cultural events which violate this demand."

Most of these would not sound odd coming out of Bernie Sanders's mouth. It is diificult to see how in its official ideology or how it governed that Nazi Germany was a free market capitalist society, rather than one oriented toward a collectivist understanding of the economy's relation to the State.

The Nazi party ignored almost everything on the 1920 platform when they were in power. Specifically all the ones you cited.

The questionis who they appealing to, what arguments and ideas were the advancing? They presented themselves a s a variety of socialist. They appealed to the same constituency that found such policies attractive.

[hammerofglass]

So you think we should judge them on the lies they told which we know are lies and ignore their actual beliefs and actions?

[Frustration]

Should we judge the Soviet Union by the beliefs it claimed to have, or the beliefs it revealed through its actions?

Again: socialists, as they were defined in the 1920s-30s, were enthusiastic supporters of eugenics.

[Mickey_Rat15]

So you think we should judge them on the lies they told which we know are lies and ignore their actual beliefs and actions?

I think you should not dismiss out of hand what they said they were and what they said they believed in throughout. That would be an error.

[hammerofglass]

So you think we should judge them on the lies they told which we know are lies and ignore their actual beliefs and actions?

I think you should not dismiss out of hand what they said they were and what they said they believed in throughout. That would be an error.

Murdering everyone in their movement who actually believed those things was something of a clue.

[hammerofglass]

Should we judge the Soviet Union by the beliefs it claimed to have, or the beliefs it revealed through its actions?

Again: socialists, as they were defined in the 1920s-30s, were enthusiastic supporters of eugenics.

Nobody is disputing that. They also didn't believe in evolution by natural selection or genetics. Your claim that everyone who supported eugenics was a socialist is the point at issue.

[Frustration]

Your claim that everyone who supported eugenics was a socialist is the point at issue.

I made no such claim. We can go back over the post history to demonstrate that, if necessary.