Yes I have. It's definitely a good insight into Marx' mind.

Actually I've read almost everything that fool wrote.

Unfortunately.

I'm not sure I understand him though. He commits to nothing and he hides his premises beneath tricks. Essentially his thesis is individuals are slaves to unseen social forces. Really depressing and pathetic philosophy.

Give some credit where it's due D2

From one your friends in the 'behind the bicycle shed' thread on a distant planet far away
Wouldn't you usually say that claiming it's to get the conversation started might be considered bad faith?

all of this, theres lots of info in there. Marx has no room for the individual in his actions, he views and analyses everything in systems. But, he very readily believes individuals matter.

this is a really good book on how Nazi's used an interpretation of Nietszche to underpin their work.

It's a good idea, but I fear a terminology list is more accepted in religious debate than in political debate. Which is a bit weird, since the debate tends to be even more heated. And yes the "y" example is a good one. It is extremely important to understand that the "socialism" part of the Nazi name is something very, very different from Marxist socialism.

This in the same sense that the "Islamic Republic of Iran" is very distinct from the "Democratic People's Republic of Korea", even though they both use the term "republic". Similarly, their use of the term "republic" doesn't invalidate or say much about the republic model employed by the USA.

It wouldn't make sense to say "Oh, the US is a republic, so it's basically just like North Korea or Iran".

No you have not.

I would bet my entire net worth and future worth+the equity in my child's organs on the black web that this claim is totally false.

OK. What do I have to gain from lying to you? I don't know you and don't care what you think. If it makes you feel better, you can believe what you want.

Take it to the LC or the science thread, chez. My spanking your ass in public is distasteful to some observers, annoying to the mods, and embarrassing to you.

Well Stephen Hicks is very good, so I'd say it's worth a read.

Of course he believes individuals matter. I believe his intentions were good and he wanted to create an ideal society that worked in harmony. Hitler did also though. With Marx the enemy was class, with Hitler the enemy was race. It's not ALL that simple, but it's what I'm gathering from reading the content of Hitler's speeches and the ideology passed from Marx to Gentile to Hitler. If you read his speeches, he is reacting very strongly to Marx, but making fine distinctions. He has not thrown the fundamental structure of marxism out the window.

It is time here to return to this particular quote from the OP.

Since the Nazis did in fact not rely on state ownership, but actually relied on privatizing state enterprises and forming privately led cartels that cooperated with the Nazi regime, it doesn't take much of a historian to understand this claim is completely wrong.

In fact, Nazi-Germany has shown us without a shred of doubt that private ownership is in no way a guarantee towards extremism.

Personally, I've never been a student of political science, or anything close to it. I just use the terms "left" and "right" how I hear them used in conversation. Which I guess is fine for a casual chat.

What happens when someone like OP comes along and says "all the reference material is wrong, and Hitler was actually left". I mean, I'm pretty sure he's wrong, but I don't know how to argue against it.

For example, I'm involved in a probability dispute in the Zoo right now, and I'm 100% sure I'm right on my position. This - not so much....

Well, Hitler and his party built concentration camps to imprison and kill socialists. That at least tells us that the claim "Hitler was a socialist" lacks some critical reflection.

Consider this: If I say Democrat and Republican presidential candidates all support the idea of a Republic led by a president, can I go from that to saying "Bernie Sanders votes Republican"?

You're just re-iterating my own points, which are non-constructive.

It's fine to say what something isn't, but it's more helpful to say what it is. Let's get to the real point here, OP doesn't like that we call Trump is a fascist, and, by extension, his political ideation fascism. So, a non-constructive argument is not going to cut it here. Quoting shockingly authoritarian statements from Trump is not going to cut it either, as has been demonstrated.

OP wants a clear-cut definition of fascism, why Hitler was a fascist, and why we think Trump is a fascist. I can't compile that, at least not in any way that would persuade OP.

The problem with this line of reasoning is that it wasn't real private ownership if it was a puppet for the Nazi state.

You have found the weakest point in my argument and props for that.
I would like to research this more. What I do believe is that private ownership is incompatible with the Nazi system. For exmaple private land ownership can't work with lebensraum.

The essential idea of an aryan race all working together is essentially the same idea as a proletariate class working together. Communal ownership is antithetical to private ownership. My suspician is Hitler used rhetoric designed to rally his people but had 0 intention of ever letting private industry happen.


This quote says it all:


I find it interesting that nobody has responded to this quote from Hitler.

Fascism is nationalist authoritarianism. The idea that liberal democratic norms and regulations are weak, that oppression must be subjugated and leadership of the country vested in a militaristic totalitarian one-party state. It is ideologically opposed to liberalism and Marxism.

Whether or not Trump is fascist must first hinge on answering if he is a successful one. To this we can say no, the US is not yet a totalitarian one-party state and remains a democratic Republic. So he is not a fascist in that sense.

Is he a fascist in the sense that he promotes or pursues actions that are out of place in a democracy but would be completely within norms in a fascist regime? A touchy subject, but I would say that especially the attacks in Lafayette park, where the executive branch directly (not through an unwitting intermediary) ordered an attack on a peaceful assembly of civilians is very much something fascist ideology would cheer. Trump afterwards walking between lines of uniformed and armed officers serving the executive branch is definitely something out of a fascist playbook.

It is just so blatant that you *want* to associate Hitler with "the left", so that "the right" can remain pure and unadulterated.

You are an extremist. You are a mirror image of Victor.

lol. Nice delusion but not so keen on applying the bad faith thingy to yourself I see. This is a largely awful thread and maybe some are unaware of your game.

While I agree with you, I do feel that from the above, the following words or phrases probably mean different things to different people:

nationalist
authoritarianism
liberal democratic
militaristic totalitarian
liberalism
Marxism
fascist/fascist regime
democratic Republic

There are probably not two people on this board who read your post and interpreted every single one of those terms the same way.

I bacame aware of it a few days ago in another thread. Nice find though.

Agreed, but that is the nature of politics and political philosophy. Even the people making these terms evolved them and changed them over time. Marx and Engels made the body of work that eventually would become the guiding principle of Marxism, but they did not always agree. In the most extreme examples, people belonging to the same political movement can end up killing each-other.

Perhaps the misunderstandings around here are more fundamental than that, but I doubt we will ever manage to enter a political discourse where we fully agree on what terms mean.

Ok boys, we've been busted. Back out, slowly does it.

Lol@chez snitching though. Shocker!

It does seem to me that a lot of buzzwords get thrown around. I don't even know what half of them mean. I don't know whether I'm a "neoliberal" or something. I feel rather unsophisticated as far as politics posters go. But I do wonder how much the posters who use these terms actually agree on what they mean. OP is a prime example.

Liberal ideology in this sense means the foundations of modern democracy, basically that citizens have rights, a constitution and through some voting mechanism elect a representative assembly to lead them.

I actually thought about clearing that up, since it is perhaps one of the more critically misunderstood terms in this debate. I think it is fair to say that in this usage of the term, pretty much everyone on this forum is what the fascists of the '30s would see as a "weak-minded liberal" and we'd be off to the camps if we didn't shut up about it.

Personally I think you shoudl ask T_D to close the thread.

But notice the breathtaking lack of self-awareness from D2. He runs off to another site to 'snitch' on this forum and then gets upset when it gets mentioned here.

I think you should definitely do a glossary. The one you did in RGT was really good, IMO.