Elections in various countries

[WeepingElf]

I strongly disagree with the idea that the Hitlerite Nazis were "socialist", even though the Strasserites may have had vaguely "socialist" leanings.

The Strength through Joy organisation comes under this category, and the Hitler Youth seems to have been physically beneficial. By some accounts, business owners seemed not to have reaped the obvious advantages of the suppression of the independent unions, beyond the suppression of disruptive activities, such as strikes.

The Nazis weren't really socialist, but they had aspects of socialism in their ideology and their policies, as your examples show. Which doesn't make them any less irredeemable, though.

[Travis B.]

I strongly disagree with the idea that the Hitlerite Nazis were "socialist", even though the Strasserites may have had vaguely "socialist" leanings.

The Strength through Joy organisation comes under this category, and the Hitler Youth seems to have been physically beneficial. By some accounts, business owners seemed not to have reaped the obvious advantages of the suppression of the independent unions, beyond the suppression of disruptive activities, such as strikes.

The Nazis weren't really socialist, but they had aspects of socialism in their ideology and their policies, as your examples show. Which doesn't make them any less irredeemable, though.

And remember that the reason for the Night of the Long Knives was specifically because people in business and the army were worried about people like the Strasserites who were calling for a "second revolution".

[Ares Land]

"The Nazis were socialists" is a common talking point of the far-right. The reasoning being, I guess, that they themselves can't be Nazis, that Nazism can be entirely explained by socialism and that by extension socialism (that is, most everything on their left) is borderline Nazism. None of this prevents discreet admiration for the Third Reich, but consistency has never been the far-right's strong suit.
I don't think it's an argument worth considering seriously.

Far right groups also like to accuse each other of socialism from time to time, and as long as it keeps them busy and not winning elections, I'm in favor.

[Travis B.]

"The Nazis were socialists" is a common talking point of the far-right. The reasoning being, I guess, that they themselves can't be Nazis, that Nazism can be entirely explained by socialism and that by extension socialism (that is, most everything on their left) is borderline Nazism. None of this prevents discreet admiration for the Third Reich, but consistency has never been the far-right's strong suit.
I don't think it's an argument worth considering seriously.

Far right groups also like to accuse each other of socialism from time to time, and as long as it keeps them busy and not winning elections, I'm in favor.

Agreed completely. I personally roll my eyes whenever anyone claims that the Nazis were "socialists".

[Richard W]

Agreed completely. I personally roll my eyes whenever anyone claims that the Nazis were "socialists".

I suspect you have a problem with your definition of 'socialist'. The TIKhistory YouTube channel has an account of the development of Hitler's socialism, The REAL reason Hitler killed Ernst Röhm in the Night of the Long Knives. 'TIK' presents the thesis that Hitler v. Röhm was a matter of tactics - whether blatantly violent revolution would advance the Nazi state.

[Travis B.]

Agreed completely. I personally roll my eyes whenever anyone claims that the Nazis were "socialists".

I suspect you have a problem with your definition of 'socialist'. The TIKhistory YouTube channel has an account of the development of Hitler's socialism, The REAL reason Hitler killed Ernst Röhm in the Night of the Long Knives. 'TIK' presents the thesis that Hitler v. Röhm was a matter of tactics - whether blatantly violent revolution would advance the Nazi state.

My definition of 'socialism' is "worker ownership and self-management of capital". By my definition, neither authoritarian big-C Communists (even though the SFRY got close) nor Social Democrats are socialists, much the less the Nazis.

[malloc]

My definition of 'socialism' is "worker ownership and self-management of capital". By my definition, neither authoritarian big-C Communists (even though the SFRY got close) nor Social Democrats are socialists, much the less the Nazis.

Quite. At the very least, socialism means more than simply state intervention in the economy. Obviously the Nazis favored state intervention because they needed to address economic crises that impeded their goals and needed to build up the military to fight WWII, not because they had some principled opposition to the wealthy and concern for the poor.

[Raphael]

I think on this topic, I'll fall back to one of my favorite pastimes, and quote Orwell at length.

From The Lion and the Unicorn, Chapter Two, Shopkeepers at War, Section I:

But it is necessary here to give some kind of definition to those much-abused words, Socialism and Fascism.

Socialism is usually defined as ‘common ownership of the means of production’. Crudely: the State, representing the whole nation, owns everything, and everyone is a State employee. This does not mean that people are stripped of private possessions such as clothes and furniture, but it does mean that all productive goods, such as land, mines, ships and machinery, are the property of the State. The State is the sole large-scale producer.

[...]

However, it has become clear in the last few years that ‘common ownership of the means of production’ is not in itself a sufficient definition of Socialism. One must also add the following: approximate equality of incomes (it need be no more than approximate), political democracy, and abolition of all hereditary privilege, especially in education. These are simply the necessary safeguards against the reappearance of a class-system. Centralized ownership has very little meaning unless the mass of the people are living roughly upon an equal level, and have some kind of control over the government. ‘The State’ may come to mean no more than a self-elected political party, and oligarchy and privilege can return, based on power rather than on money.

But what then is Fascism?

Fascism, at any rate the German version, is a form of capitalism that borrows from Socialism just such features as will make it efficient for war purposes. Internally, Germany has a good deal in common with a Socialist state. Ownership has never been abolished, there are still capitalists and workers, and – this is the important point, and the real reason why rich men all over the world tend to sympathize with Fascism – generally speaking the same people are capitalists and the same people workers as before the Nazi revolution. But at the same time the State, which is simply the Nazi Party, is in control of everything. It controls investment, raw materials, rates of interest, working hours, wages. The factory owner still owns his factory, but he is for practical purposes reduced to the status of a manager. Everyone is in effect a State employee, though the salaries vary very greatly. The mere efficiency of such a system, the elimination of waste and obstruction, is obvious. In seven years it has built up the most powerful war machine the world has ever seen.

But the idea underlying Fascism is irreconcilably different from that which underlies Socialism. Socialism aims, ultimately, at a world-state of free and equal human beings. It takes the equality of human rights for granted. Nazism assumes just the opposite. The driving force behind the Nazi movement is the belief in human inequality, the superiority of Germans to all other races, the right of Germany to rule the world. Outside the German Reich it does not recognize any obligations. Eminent Nazi professors have ‘proved’ over and over again that only nordic man is fully human, have even mooted the idea that non-nordic peoples (such as ourselves) can interbreed with gorillas! Therefore, while a species of war-Socialism exists within the German state, its attitude towards conquered nations is frankly that of an exploiter. The function of the Czechs, Poles, French, etc. is simply to produce such goods as Germany may need, and get in return just as little as will keep them from open rebellion. If we are conquered, our job will probably be to manufacture weapons for Hitler’s forthcoming wars with Russia and America. The Nazis aim, in effect, at setting up a kind of caste system, with four main castes corresponding rather closely to those of the Hindu religion. At the top comes the Nazi party, second come the mass of the German people, third come the conquered European populations. Fourth and last are to come the coloured peoples, the ‘semi-apes’ as Hitler calls them, who are to be reduced quite openly to slavery.

[zompist]

Orwell is always an excellent observer. I'll have to find that book.

The key point is his comment that "the real reason why rich men all over the world tend to sympathize with Fascism – generally speaking the same people are capitalists and the same people workers as before the Nazi revolution." That's essentially why Naziism (and fascism) are right-wing ideologies: because the ownership class, the rich people, love it. "Socialism" means nothing if it means "what rich people want to do." Naziism was put in power by the conservatives.

You can also see quite clearly how the capitalists are co-opted, even betrayed. "The factory owner still owns his factory, but he is for practical purposes reduced to the status of a manager." That is obviously what the Republicans are aiming for. Big companies must bow the knee-- give fealty, accept ridiculous demands, sign sweetheart deals with the administration, even give up part of their ownership. But they stay rich, may even get richer, and pesky things like high taxes and strikes are eliminated. Putin and Orbán are the same or worse: any plutocrat who gets uppity will fall out of a window.

(One more nuance though, from Robert Paxton: if conservatives can rule without the fascists, they will, and they will even suppress the fascists. They give in to the fascists when they think there is no other way to retain power.)

What Orwell gets wrong, however, is the efficiency angle. Orwell wrote most of his works either in the Depression or WWII when both fascism and Soviet communism seemed dynamic and seemed to avoid the crippling problems of the democracies. Germany looked prosperous because it had a huge state-supported shift toward war industry which pulled it out of the depression.

And then it was completely destroyed. Turns out democracies can pull that trick too, and better, and faster. A modern history of the war will point out the many errors and inefficiencies of the Nazi regime, and no one even pretends that Italian fascism worked well.

Orwell was very perceptive about how state ownership betrays the workers, becomes simply a new aristocracy, if there is no democracy. But it didn't really occur to him that state ownership is not scientific, efficient, and inevitable; nor that the people who own and run a factory might be its workers. Or the workers and the community, or whatever. He didn't even have things like Mondragon to look at.

[Ares Land]

Orwell is always an excellent observer. I'll have to find that book.

The key point is his comment that "the real reason why rich men all over the world tend to sympathize with Fascism – generally speaking the same people are capitalists and the same people workers as before the Nazi revolution." [...]

(One more nuance though, from Robert Paxton: if conservatives can rule without the fascists, they will, and they will even suppress the fascists. They give in to the fascists when they think there is no other way to retain power.)

One factor was fear of communism, and surprisingly it seems to be the case with Trump too (judging by The Unhumans and other similar trash.) Fear of communism seems a tad irrational in 21st century America, but apparently there we are.

[Raphael]

Orwell is always an excellent observer. I'll have to find that book.

Judging from some of your past comments on him, I think you've already read the first part, England Your England, which has sometimes been published as a standalone essay.

Don't expect a "book", though - in terms of length, it's more like an extended pamphlet.

What Orwell gets wrong, however, is the efficiency angle. Orwell wrote most of his works either in the Depression or WWII when both fascism and Soviet communism seemed dynamic and seemed to avoid the crippling problems of the democracies. Germany looked prosperous because it had a huge state-supported shift toward war industry which pulled it out of the depression.

And then it was completely destroyed. Turns out democracies can pull that trick too, and better, and faster. A modern history of the war will point out the many errors and inefficiencies of the Nazi regime, and no one even pretends that Italian fascism worked well.

Orwell was very perceptive about how state ownership betrays the workers, becomes simply a new aristocracy, if there is no democracy. But it didn't really occur to him that state ownership is not scientific, efficient, and inevitable; nor that the people who own and run a factory might be its workers. Or the workers and the community, or whatever. He didn't even have things like Mondragon to look at.

Yeah, the main weakness of that text is the underlying assumption that "purely" capitalist countries can't wage war successfully, because they can't make it profitable enough for the capitalists to produce armaments. Let's just say that history hasn't been kind to that assumption. The text was written in 1941, and still very much influenced by how traumatic the year 1940 had been for supporters of the Allied cause.

[Travis B.]

What Orwell gets wrong, however, is the efficiency angle. Orwell wrote most of his works either in the Depression or WWII when both fascism and Soviet communism seemed dynamic and seemed to avoid the crippling problems of the democracies. Germany looked prosperous because it had a huge state-supported shift toward war industry which pulled it out of the depression.

And then it was completely destroyed. Turns out democracies can pull that trick too, and better, and faster. A modern history of the war will point out the many errors and inefficiencies of the Nazi regime, and no one even pretends that Italian fascism worked well.

Orwell was very perceptive about how state ownership betrays the workers, becomes simply a new aristocracy, if there is no democracy. But it didn't really occur to him that state ownership is not scientific, efficient, and inevitable; nor that the people who own and run a factory might be its workers. Or the workers and the community, or whatever. He didn't even have things like Mondragon to look at.

At the time big-C Communism, with its state ownership and all that, was in the vogue, and while Orwell was very disillusioned with this as a socialist, like many democratic socialists of his day he did not really look beyond state ownership aside from believing that it ought to be democratic. While libertarian socialists today like to bring up the Catalonian experiment as an example, for the most part in the 1930's and early 1940's libertarian socialism was not popular, and true worker ownership and self-management of capital is really a libertarian socialist idea (even though it has been borrowed into democratic socialism).

[Ares Land]

What Orwell gets wrong, however, is the efficiency angle. Orwell wrote most of his works either in the Depression or WWII when both fascism and Soviet communism seemed dynamic and seemed to avoid the crippling problems of the democracies. Germany looked prosperous because it had a huge state-supported shift toward war industry which pulled it out of the depression.

Another thing is -- a dictatorship will appear to outcompete a democracy any time, because it controls information in a way a democratic government can't. And additionally, free media will mostly report on what goes wrong.

I think we see that these days with Russia, the prosperity and military strength of which seem largely overstated. (I believe problems with China are similarly under-reported.)

[Travis B.]

What Orwell gets wrong, however, is the efficiency angle. Orwell wrote most of his works either in the Depression or WWII when both fascism and Soviet communism seemed dynamic and seemed to avoid the crippling problems of the democracies. Germany looked prosperous because it had a huge state-supported shift toward war industry which pulled it out of the depression.

Another thing is -- a dictatorship will appear to outcompete a democracy any time, because it controls information in a way a democratic government can't. And additionally, free media will mostly report on what goes wrong.

I think we see that these days with Russia, the prosperity and military strength of which seem largely overstated. (I believe problems with China are similarly under-reported.)

Russia's war in Ukraine is a testament to the effectiveness of authoritarianism. /s

I.e. if authoritarianism meant efficiency Russia should have managed to quickly stomp Ukraine into the ground... which it hasn't.

[Raphael]

Another thing is -- a dictatorship will appear to outcompete a democracy any time, because it controls information in a way a democratic government can't. And additionally, free media will mostly report on what goes wrong.

That might be a pretty good test for how democratic or dictatorial a place you're visiting is. It's not foolproof, but it works much of the time. If the headlines are all or mostly about all the stuff that's going wrong, you might live in a democracy. If the headlines are all about the latest glorious achievements of the fatherland, you're fairly certain to live in a dictatorship.

[Flau]

(Whether a Social Democratic government will help us much in weathering the current right wing populist wave is a discussion for another post).

I'd be glad to hear your views on this!
Our right-wingers are pretty enamored of Denmark.
They feel that Denmark will successfully avert right-wing populism because (in their view) the Danish Social Democrats are tough on crime, and more importantly tough on immigration.
The view is more generally is that Social Democracy works in Denmark but cannot possibly work in France, because the Danes are strict on immigration whereas we are dangerously lax.

This is something I have been thinking about a bit. I will respond in this thread in order to not clutter up the Greenland thread, and since it is election season in Denmark (local elections on November 18 and a general election some time next year). Since this is a long post, I am breaking it up and putting the sections behind spoilers for those interested.

Currently, the country is ruled by a grand coalition consisting of the Social Democrats (S) headed by prime minister Mette Frederiksen, the centrist Moderates (M) and the centre-right Venstre (V, confusingly meaning “Left”). As you note, the Danish Social Democrats have drawn some headlines around Europe for adopting some right-wing populist policies and thus (it is hoped) pre-empting the rise of the far right. Personally, I am skeptical that this will work, or that it will lead to positive results in the long run.

Historical background:

More: show

In 1995 a splinter group of the tax abolitionist Progress Party, who had made being anti-Arab a more and more important part of their brand, formed the right-wing populist Danish People’s Party (DF). Despite being initially scorned by the establishment it proved a great success, making gains in five of the six elections between 1995 and 2019. In the meantime S, who were used to winning 30-50 percent of the vote, lost time and time again. After a close defeat in 2015 where the DF came in second, former prime minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt stepped down as party leader. She was replaced by Mette Frederiksen, who had the ambition of once more making S into a proper worker’s party.

The strategy:

More: show

The strategy has been to win back working-class and rural voters by adopting many of the trappings of a right-wing populist party: opposition to immigration (and immigrants, and their descendants), anti-intellectual rhetoric, playing up the urban-rural divide and attacking city-dwellers, and (until February 2022) EU skepticism. [Relevant for the discussion with Travis, this also included opposition to dealing with issues of decolonisation in Greenland, but then 2016 and 2024 happened, and now they are a lot more on board with that]. What still separates them from the far right is their attempt to do all this while staying firmly within the establishment, making deals across the aisle in Parliament and not leaving any international agreements (yet).

Does it work?

More: show

Leaving aside whether I like their new line, is this working for them? Sort of; they have managed to win two elections and keep a few of their campaign promises. They stand to lose voters in the next election, but not as badly as M. Also, Mette Frederiksen has succeeded in exercising an unprecedented level of control over the (nominally non-partisan) civil service. However, working with the establishment involves making deals and staying within the rules, and that is unpopular with far-right voters. For example, the pro-business M and V are now advocating importing immigrant labour, which has caused the "traditional" far-right parties to steadily rise in the polls. Also, if you go to Brussels trying to reform the European Human Rights Convention and the other countries are not interested, these voters are not going to be satisfied with a “well, we tried”. You will eventually have to also act like a right-wing populist.

Of course, there is also the issue of whether it is really better to let Social Democrats implement far-right policies than simply having a far-right government. One might argue that S so far have (sort of) tried to preserve existing democratic structures and institutions. However, I am seeing worrying signs that this is slipping (as with the civil service, or the chat control proposed by the Danish EU presidency). Also, minority protections are a pretty important part of liberal democracy, and in Denmark only few of these are mentioned in the Constitution. So if the EHRC goes, so do a lot of the rights covered there. The result could be our very own brand of cozy, centrist authoritarianism.

To summarise, I fear the “Danish strategy” may only be slowing down the democratic backsliding affecting other countries that get taken over by the far right, while also getting a head start on some far-right policies. I hope I’m wrong though and would welcome other perspectives on this particular strategy.

[Travis B.]

Yeah, from looking deeper into it, the Social Democrats in Denmark seem more like a center-right party than anything, and not even center-left as Social Democrat-type parties typically are. The fact that they are in a government with a centrist and a center-right party should not be surprising then. Yes, they may be 'better' than the Danish People's Party, but they appear to be apeing the right in many ways.

Edit: But then, I am seeing it argued that the Social Democrats in Denmark actually are a social-democratic party, just one that is anti-immigrant, in that many of the goals they have achieved after returning to power in Denmark actually are social-democratic goals, not right-wing ones.

[MacAnDàil]

OK, I disagree with the traitors part myself. However, what do you mean by the first part?

Let's say you're really absolutely convinced that the vast majority of people, either in the world in general or in your own society, are irredeemably evil because they don't oppose genocide decidedly enough. And now suppose that at some point, you end up with real substantial power, the kind of power that enables you to kill people.

In that case, at that point, you have both a strong motivation, and, inside your own mind, a justification for going really hard after the vast majority of the people over whom you now have power. Which is exactly the kind of combination of factors that can easily lead to large-scale killings.

There is perhaps a misunderstanding. Is this related to the accusations of treason? Those are by people who have no particular power being discontent about the insufficient left-wingness of other left-wingers.

The key thing is that these sorts of things are by no means unique to the Nazis ─ what was unique to the Nazis was their level of industrialization of genocide. May authoritarians have done similar things to what the Republicans are doing now, and as you say, what the Republicans are doing now has more in common with Putin or Orbán than Hitler. Trump has been doing his part in helping incite genocide with his cheerleading of what Israel is going in Gaza, but Trump himself is not a génocidaire at least yet. And if Trump is a Nazi, so are many other authoritarians, which dilutes the significance of the term.

I largely agree with Travis B.

The salient features of the Nazis seem to me to be their racism (or whatever - 'tribalism' seems too narrow), integrity, socialist leanings and illiberality. The socialist leanings included their ultimately believing that things belonged to the German people, not to individuals and not to non-Germans. Their integrity led to them seeing genocide as reasonably following from their other goals, but was tempered by a feeling that some other peoples could be a bit 'German' . Integrity is not always good.

An important distinction in these ideologies is the concept of 'us'.

The concept of 'us' was more nationalist than socialist. Also, there is no integrity in an ideology that performs attacks against its own militia and legalises it only afterwards.

[Travis B.]

The key thing is that these sorts of things are by no means unique to the Nazis ─ what was unique to the Nazis was their level of industrialization of genocide. May authoritarians have done similar things to what the Republicans are doing now, and as you say, what the Republicans are doing now has more in common with Putin or Orbán than Hitler. Trump has been doing his part in helping incite genocide with his cheerleading of what Israel is going in Gaza, but Trump himself is not a génocidaire at least yet. And if Trump is a Nazi, so are many other authoritarians, which dilutes the significance of the term.

I largely agree with Travis B.

The salient features of the Nazis seem to me to be their racism (or whatever - 'tribalism' seems too narrow), integrity, socialist leanings and illiberality. The socialist leanings included their ultimately believing that things belonged to the German people, not to individuals and not to non-Germans. Their integrity led to them seeing genocide as reasonably following from their other goals, but was tempered by a feeling that some other peoples could be a bit 'German' . Integrity is not always good.

An important distinction in these ideologies is the concept of 'us'.

The concept of 'us' was more nationalist than socialist. Also, there is no integrity in an ideology that performs attacks against its own militia and legalises it only afterwards.

It should be remembered that classically socialism has been an anti-nationalist ideology (cf. "Workers of the world, unite!"), even though there have been nationalist offshoots such as Stalinism and Arab socialism.

Also, I agree that attacking your own militia and retroactively legalizing it to score political points with the established political and business classes demonstrates a lack of integrity. If the Nazis had any integrity, and the "Röhm-Putsch" were anything other than a scurrilious allegation, they would have put those who wanted a "second revolution" on trial rather than summarily murdering them and legalizing it afterwards.

[Flau]

Yeah, from looking deeper into it, the Social Democrats in Denmark seem more like a center-right party than anything, and not even center-left as Social Democrat-type parties typically are. The fact that they are in a government with a centrist and a center-right party should not be surprising then. Yes, they may be 'better' than the Danish People's Party, but they appear to be apeing the right in many ways.

Yes, that's a frequent complaint from the left. And maybe it's as simple as that: there is a centre-right party merely named the Social Democrats, and this does not really affect the threat of fascism either way.

Edit: But then, I am seeing it argued that the Social Democrats in Denmark actually are a social-democratic party, just one that is anti-immigrant, in that many of the goals they have achieved after returning to power in Denmark actually are social-democratic goals, not right-wing ones.

They are not really economically right-wing, generally not prioritising tax cuts etc. They have also been more generous than their coalition partners on retirement benefits in particular. Then again, this has been coupled with unemployment benefit cuts for the young. Maybe on balance, centre or centre-left is still an ok description of their economic policy.