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Comment by amptorn | Hacker News Reader

The Nazis were not socialists. Sure, it was in the name, but are you seriously going to take a Nazi's word for it? They were fascists.

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I like Hayek's "planning" tool for distinguishing socialism. That is, does the ideology position the state as the planner of its citizens lives in one way or another? Socialism is the intervention of the state in its citizens lives be it healthcare, industry, moral rules, etc. From this view fascism is indeed socialism.

The alternative is liberalism or the absence of planning.

By that definition, many monarchies would be "socialist" (E.g. the German Empire, which created many of the social security systems in Germany, specifically to avoid socialism rising). That sounds like a pretty massive re-definition of the term to allow pushing it into a one-dimensional scale, especially in the context of the time where the Nazis choose their label.

German monarchy yielded a lot to socialist demands to avoid revolution. This concessions, of course, made German Empire more socialist country then many people believe.

Doesn't that make everything socialism? What political system wouldn't be socialism?

Liberalism is the opposite of planning. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalism

I highly recommend Hayek's Road to Serfdom for more details.

That seems to be describing governance, democracy and rule of law. Before that we had feudalism for thousands of years. And before that there were informal market places where people exchanged goods and services, the ultimate 'information processors' according to Hayek, yet these marketplaces did not lead to any kind of civilization, progress, 'freedom' or modernism.

Without rule of law there is barbarism. Any law infringes 'freedom', the thief's freedom, the plunderers freedom, the polluters freedom, the arsonists freedom, the greedy fisherman's freedom, so whose freedom are you going to protect and whose freedom will you take? And if you take someone's freedom they will not consent so you need force.

That means you need planning to develop rules, to convince the majority to agree to the rules, a system to enforce the rules and reach some kind of ongoing consensus for any sustainable peaceful society. And you are back to a society with planning, rules, democracy, governance and loss of 'freedom'. Even a basic marketplace needs 'planning' and rules to function so this 'market as planner' thesis seems aspirational.

The main difference is whether the rules are set ahead of time or whether they're adjusted by a central authority. For example, compare the tort system to a regulatory board. Hayek explores this distinction in detail in the Road to Serfdom.

They maintained a socialist state, financing the healthcare of all with the contributions (not symmetrical) of society. Not surprising. Spain’s healthcare system (arguably one of the best public ones) was started by Franco, a fascist ditactor.

The Nazis were so socialist they invented the term "privatisation" https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdf/10.1257/jep.20.3.187

And Lenin invented NEP [1], what's your point? Of course socialists would sometimes borrow capitalist concepts, because they actually work.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Economic_Policy

One core idea of fascism is that in unity lies strength. The main symbol of this is the faces, where the rods are made stronger by being made together. This idea is not incompatible with socialism, on the contrary. Now of course there's the flip side, which excludes everyone who are not in the group. Stuff like Jews are not true Germans or something. That side I would say is indeed incompatible with socialism.

But try for a moment to see it from a fascist's perspective. Who they care about, really? It's easy to only see one's peers, and not so hard to feel contempt towards outsiders. I bet that from the inside, fascism can easily feel socialist. A current example I think would be some anti-fascist groups, which despite their stated goals can be pretty fascist.

> Stuff like Jews are not true Germans or something. That side I would say is indeed incompatible with socialism.

I guess no one told the soviet union about their antisemitism being incompatible with their ideology.

Antisemitism absolutely was incompatible with official USSR ideology. So was any form of racism and nationalism. That doesn't mean it didn't exist of course, but it was never official policy as in Nazi Germany.

It's not true. Socialism can go well (and is going well) with many sorts of other *isms, simply by re-definition, or making compromises for "greater good". Soviet Union had some semi-hidden policies which broke its own pledges, but it also had a lot of official manifestations, which apparently weren't seen as uncomfortable. E.g. Soviet anthem mentioned "great Russia" in the first stanza. Official Kremlin guard was selected on a combination of ideological, and racial features. And, believe me, I can continue with this for a long time.

Antisemitism in Soviet Union followed from the way they understood equality. For example, they look at the distribution of university students and notice that Jews are over-represented while, say, Uzbeks are under-represented. That's not fair, let's fix this inequality with admissions quota.

I guess no one told the soviet union about their antisemitism being incompatible with their ideology.

The British Labour Party is similarly engulfed in an anti-Semitism scandal at the moment, it’s all over the papers.

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