Was Adolf Hitler a Socialist?: Preface.

Recently there has been an argument flying around about the question of was Hitler a socialist. It is, I think, a really stupid question. What difference does the answer, whatever it may be, make? I will admit that my immediate emotional reaction is "Of course he was!". 

But, upon reflection, I have to say that Hitler, personally, was probably not a socialist. He was an opportunistic, romantic, racist, nationalist gambler.

However, my immediate emotional (beware emotional responses!) reaction to the question is based on the idea that the ideology of fascism shares the same roots as the other great destroyers of the 20th Century - Communism and Socialism. Nazism was a form of Fascism, just a lot more racist than fascism generally. So around Hitler arose a whole body of ideological fantasising that was clearly more socialist than Hitler was. I don't think Hitler cared too much about it. He was prepared to exploit any situation that would help him up the ladder of power. He became an almost a religious figure in the Germany of the 1930's. And he was quite happy to exploit that too. If one scours his speeches on can find a snippet that supports any view - he was a socialist, he wasn't a socialist. He was Christian, he was an atheist and so on.

However, as I mentioned above Fascism, as an ideology, shares the same roots and goals as Socialism and Communism.

When I was a student, over 40 years ago (Oh no, the old man talks!) I did some courses in politics. The professors and lecturers, many no more than 10 years older than I was at that time, accepted it as an obvious, well documented, fact that these three ideologies were connected. Were variations on the same theme.

These professors and lecturers, by the way, stood head and shoulders, intellectually, above the average university professor of today. They were the product of a system that valued genuine scholarship, sound empirical evidence and sound argumentation. I knew that some of them were socialist, but that did not appear to affect their teaching or their scholarship. So I put a lot of weight on their arguments. I was, at that time, a serious Marxist by the way.

In broad terms these ideologies have several things in common:

1. Prioritise the collective over the individual;
2. The use of state power to achieve their ends;
3. A hostility to free enterprise and capitalism;
4. A tendency to romanticise aspects of their ideological position;
5. A focus on 'collective identities' - such as nation, race, class, the disadvantaged and to romanticise these too;
6. A tendency to create an almost religious dogma to which one must adhere - this varies but is always there; 
7. A tendency to create a pantheon of 'saints and sinners';

Now, I am aware that many of these points apply to other social phenomena too. One could argue that they are always present in any large collective of human beings. Identity politics on a grand scale. And all states stand on a monopoly of the use of force, and all states will use it. But these ideologies exploited these traits and refined them into an almost religious system. In fact, I regard most ideologies as 'religious' and most religions as 'ideological'. 

This is just an off the cuff ad hoc drafting of some thoughts I have, hence the word 'Preface' in the title.I do intend to write more on this when I have time. So it could be quite a while yet before I do.

Not that it makes any difference to anything in the world what I write or say. But, I just feel the need to do so.

Peace.

Si vis pacem, para bellum

Islam delenda est