Ignorance and Socialism

The parting on the left
Is now parting on the right
And the beards have all grown longer overnight
--The Who

In an exchange on the House floor this past week, several Democrats protested claims made by several Republicans that Nazis were socialists. A writer for the leftist outlet Politico rushed to defend the Democrats:

"Of course, this isn't true. The Nazi Party, officially National Socialist German Worker's Party, was fascist, not socialist - the opposite end of the political universe from socialists. But that hasn't stopped other Republicans from jumping in as well."

The Democrats and their media lackeys would benefit from a better understanding of economics and history.

As these pages have discussed, socialism is a form of economic organizing in which control of the means of production rests with the state. Socialism comes in different brands. One form is communism, credited to the ideas of Karl Marx, which seeks to distribute production equitably in the name of the 'common good.'

Enthusiasm for communism as a political means for socialistic organizing grew in the late 1800s. By the turn of the Twentieth Century, Germany had embraced social welfare programs patterned on the Marxist ideal. However, World War I and its after effects soured sentiment for communism among the German people--particularly the part about sharing the wealth with comrades worldwide.

Political activists including Adolph Hitler convinced the German people that a more inwardly focused brand of socialism--one that stopped at the country's borders--would benefit them. The idea was for government to concentrate resource control on important production verticals. Proceeds would be shared inside the German borders.

The national socialist (NAZI) movement was born and became the template for similar movements elsewhere. Roosevelt's New Deal even employed several features.

Hayek understood that 'Marxist socialism' and 'National socialism' were merely different expressions of the same idea. He warned policymakers that the increasingly interventionist policies of the US and UK up to and during World War II were paradoxically transforming the ‘allies’ into precisely those 'bad' countries that we were fighting a world war against.

Ignorance about socialism then, it seems, remains ignorance about socialism now.