Nazism: Difference between revisions

===[[File:Sorelia.png|frameless]][[File:Corptism.png|frameless]] Nazi Economics[[File:Statesoc.png|frameless]][[File:Statecap.png|frameless]]===

Nazism present itself as an anti-capitalist and anti-communist ideology, deemed as a “Third Position” and beyond both Communism and Capitalism, being a Hegelian Dialectic of the two. However, neither Hitler nor any Nazi ideologues ever have qualified themselves as a “Third Position”—a term which appeared only years after the collapse of XXth century European fascist regimes, as a set of neo-fascist political ideologies that developed in the context of the Cold War. In fact, economics wasn't a structuring part of the Nazi ideology, as it has always been an accessory, or secondary aspect of it which primarily served its rhetoric depending on the context, resulting in a lack of any coherent theory. Though it is important to mention that Hitler actually believed that the lack of a precise economic program was one of the Nazi Party's strengths, saying: "The basic feature of our economic theory is that we have no theory at all". It is important to note that, the "socialism" in Nazism (and Fascism) is the totalitarian state's control of "private" and public production and industry, without the Marxist view of class struggle, but instead a struggle between the different races/ethnicities (Nazism) and/or Nations (Classical Fascism). Their "Socialism" is not a economic system in of itself, not the Socialism of Marx, and stands in opposition in both Capitalism and Communism. It would be accurate to say that Nazism's (and Fascism's) Socialism is the definitive social structure which is more comparable to the structures of Individualism (in Liberalism and Capitalism) and Collectivism (in Marxism and Communism), yet it also stands in opposition to those 2 as well. The totalitarian state controls every aspect of the individual and groups making the public and even the "private" sector compliant to it. This led Nazism to align with German capitalists’ interests and integrate the then traditional capitalist mode of production in its economic policies and ideology. To Hitler, "the capitalists have worked their way to the top through their capacity, and as the basis of this selection, which again only proves their higher race, they have a right to lead." Nazi ideology indeed held entrepreneurship in high regard, and private property was considered a precondition to developing the creativity of members of the German race in the best interest of the economy, and therefore the nation. Thus, in spite of their rhetoric condemning big business prior to their rise to power, the Nazis quickly entered into a partnership with German business leaders. Industrialists massively supported the Nazi accession to power once his accession to power was seen as unavoidable, from about mid-1932 onwards, and what oppositon was initially present among them disappeared as they decided to collaborate with the new regime following private interests and/or political and ideological affinities, and thus as early as February 1933. That month, after being appointed Chancellor but before gaining dictatorial powers, Hitler made a personal appeal to German business leaders to help fund the Nazi Party for the crucial months that were to follow. He argued that they should support him in establishing a dictatorship because "private enterprise cannot be maintained in the age of democracy" and because democracy would allegedly lead to communism. He promised to destroy the German left and the trade unions (those who did not get absorbed by the state), and in the following weeks, the Nazi Party received contributions from seventeen different business groups, with the largest coming from IG Farben and Deutsche Bank. The leaders of German capitalism therefore collaborated with the Nazis during their rise to power, and were willing partners in the destruction of political pluralism in Germany. In exchange, owners and managers of German businesses were granted unprecedented powers to control their workforce, collective bargaining was abolished and wages were frozen at a relatively low level. The Nazis granted millions of marks in credits to private businesses, and many businessmen had friendly relations to the Nazis, most notably with Heinrich Himmler and his Freundeskreis der Wirtschaft. German capitalists received substantial benefits from the Nazi state after it was established, including high profits monopolies and cartels. In this way, privatization was a tool in the hands of the Nazi Party to facilitate the accumulation of private fortunes and industrial empires by its foremost members and collaborators. This would have intensified centralization of economic affairs and government in an increasingly narrow group of collaborators to the Nazi regime made of capitalist leaders and economic elites. The Nazi government in 1930s Germany undertook a wide scale privatization policy. The Nazis privatized public properties and public services, only increasing economic state control through regulations already practiced by prior conservative governments. The government sold public ownership in several State-owned firms in different sectors. In addition, delivery of some public services previously produced by the public sector was transferred to the private sector, mainly to organizations within the Nazi Party. Ideological motivations do not explain Nazi privatization. However, political motivations were important. The Nazi government may have used privatization (worth to note that back in this time word "privatization" had opposite meaning of what we have today, and the "private" individuals running the mode of production is required to be compliant to the totalitarian state as to avoid cessation and take over of the state itself) as a tool to improve its relationship with big industrialists and to increase support among this group for its policies.

The economy of Nazi Germany has even before the war been significantly relying on a maintained supply of slave labor comprised of homeless people, homosexuals, alleged criminals as well as political dissidents, communists, Jews, and anyone else deemed "undesirable" by the regime. They were systematically imprisoned in labor camps, a network of 457 complexes with dozens of subsidiary camps, scattered over a broad area of German-occupied Poland, which exploited to the fullest the labor of their prisoners, in many cases working inmates to their death. During the war, prisoners and civilians were brought into Germany from occupied territories. About 5 million Polish citizens (including Polish Jews) went through them. The shortage of agricultural labor was filled in german rural areas by forced laborers from the occupied territories of Poland and the Soviet Union, whose children were usually murdered inside special centers known as Ausländerkinder-Pflegestätte. Leading German companies including Thyssen, Krupp, IG Farben, Bosch, Blaupunkt, Daimler-Benz, Demag, Henschel, Junkers, Messerschmitt, Philips, Siemens, Walther, and Volkswagen, on top of Nazi German startups which ballooned during this period, and all German subsidiaries of foreign firms including Fordwerke (Ford Motor Company) and Adam Opel AG (a subsidiary of General Motors), relied heavily on slave labor : by 1944, one-quarter of Germany's entire work force was made up of slave labor, and the majority of German factories had a contingent of prisoners.

'''Economic policies of the Third Reich :'''

*Hitler appointed [[File:Schacht.png]] Hjalmar Schacht, right-wing liberal economist, as President of the Reichsbank in 1933 and Minister of Economics in 1934. Hjalmar Schacht created a scheme for deficit financing, in which capital projects were paid for with the issuance of promissory notes called Mefo bills, which could be traded by companies with each other, and which was vastly used for the Reich's military expansion. He opposed policy of German re-armament insofar as it violated the Treaty of Versailles and (in his view) disrupted the German economy. And was resigned as President of the Reichsbank in January 1939. In 1944, Schacht was arrested by the Gestapo.

*The Nazis were hostile to the very idea of social welfare, upholding instead the social darwinist concept that the weak and feeble should perish. By the 1930s, the Great Depression had caused mass unemployment in Germany, and it had become politically untenable for the Nazis to write off the destitute as not worth helping. The Nazi regime thus established the NSV as the single Nazi Party welfare organ on 3 May 1933. The NSV wasn’t in fact social welfare, as the Nazis explicitly designed and ran it so that it could be granted only to individuals who could prove their value to the Volksgemeinschaft (the national/racial community). It also restricted its assistance to individuals of "Aryan descent" who met a range of conditions to be deemed worthy of support, officially stating that its aim was to promote "the living, healthy forces of the German people.” The list of those excluded from NSV benefits was composed of "alcoholics, tramps, homosexuals, prostitutes, the 'work-shy' or the 'asocial', habitual criminals, the hereditarily ill (a widely defined category) and members of races other than the Aryan.”

*Real wages in Germany dropped by roughly 25% between 1933 and 1938. Along with the abolition of the right to strike, workers were also in large part rendered unable to quit their jobs. Labor books were introduced in 1935, and the consent of the previous employer was required in order to be hired for another job.

*The Nazis hardly ever increased taxes on individual German citizens, on the contrary, top personal income tax rate in 1941 was 13.7% in Germany, as opposed to 23.7% in Great Britain.

*The Nazi regime would at times resort to price control under the administration of right-wing liberal economists Hjalmar Schacht and Carl Friedrich Goerdeler, respectively as Minister of Economics and Price Commissioner. In sectors like agriculture, business monopoly rights were granted to private marketing boards to control production and prices with a quota system.

*The Nazis banned all trade unions that existed before their rise to power, and replaced them with the German Labour Front (DAF), controlled by the Nazi Party. They also outlawed strikes and lockouts. The stated goal of the German Labour Front was not to protect workers, but to increase output, and it brought in employers as well as workers. By 1934, the DAF merged with the Chamber of Economics, which already absorbed all existing chambers of commerce, when it became the economics department of the DAF. This is about the only policy implemented by the Nazis that could be considered a form of corporatism, the rest of which much better fit more classical authoritarian capitalist ideas.

Within the Nazi Party, the faction associated with what could be closer to anti-capitalist beliefs was the SA, a paramilitary wing led by Ernst Röhm. The SA had a complicated relationship with the rest of the party, giving both Röhm himself and local SA leaders significant autonomy. Different local leaders would even promote different political ideas in their units, resulting in Hitler purging Röhm and other radical members of the SA in 1934, during the Night of the Long Knives. Another figure of the Nazy Party sometimes seen as more economically left-wing was Joseph Goebbels, because of initial disagreements he may have hold against the main current of the Party regarding its economic beliefs. However, while first closer to the Strasserist wing, as he rose in prominence within the movement, Goebbles abandoned his former more socialist-ish ideas and completely aligned himself on Hitler’s thought. During power struggles taking place inside of the Party, as Goebbels and the Strasserists tried to turn Hitler against the right wing. In vain, but Hitler tempered, leaving an open door: in a speech on February 28, he essentially attacked “Marxism”. Goebbels knows that this is the chance to be seized, he prepares his betrayal: at the beginning of March, Strasser is seriously injured by communists during a meeting; this is an opportunity for Goebbels to meet the right wing. On March 12, he was invited to the lands of one of the supporters of the latter (in Franconia at Streicher's), then on March 21, in Nuremberg, he met Streicher and reconciled with Luid. On March 27, Goebbels made his self-criticism, writing an editorial with the evocative title: “There is something wrong with me!” That's the end of the "Strasserian" Goebbels; henceforth he is entirely Hitlerian. This betrayal does not prevent Goebbels from always having admired Hitler. He then puts his errors on the back of his bad advisers, in particular Hermann Esser, the head of propaganda for the NSDAP.