Excuse me fellows, but your posts in response to mine hardly respond to anything I stated at all. While your hearty idealization of the victimized proletariat -
My goodness. Did I say anything like that?
as in those tens of thousands of slumbering bureaucrats in all the three and four letter agencies in Federal and state government pulling down $150,000.00 a year plus generous benefits -
So you're saying that the average Federal or State employee makes 150,000 a year? I really didn't know that.
sounds very stirring and would go over splendidly with your comrades at the Democratic Underground and Daily Kos, it doesn't really explain why Mussolini and Hitler thought of themselves as Socialists and sold their movements as such to their people.
Hitler defined what he meant by the word Socialism:
"Every truly national idea is in the last resort Social, i.e., he who is prepared so completely to adopt the cause of his people that he really knows no higher ideal than the prosperity of this--his own--people, he who has so taken to heart the meaning of our great song "Deutschland, Deutschland uber alles," that nothing in this world stands for him higher than this Germany, people and land, land and people, he is a Socialist!"
Again..
"Our adopted term "Socialist" has nothing to do with Marxian Socialism. Marxism is anti-property; true Socialism is not. Marxism places no value on the individual, or individual effort, or efficiency; true Socialism values the individual and encourages him in individual efficiency, at the same time holding that his interests as an individual must be in consonance with those of the community."
Why the above sounds just like Karl Marx. I hear you....
Now as for Mussolini, it's true that in his youth he actually WAS a Socialist. At some point during World War I he created the Fascist Philosophy. He was backed by the large owners of Capital and those who owned the large farms. He immediately went to work for them, breaking stirkes and visiting the sharecroppers to strighten them out.
He believed in the unity of Government and Capital. His government was by the Capitalists, of the Capitalists and for the Capitalists. no unions allowed.
That Hitler opposed International Socialism, and was sometimes its bitterest enemy is typical of a situation where in two competing variants of the same basic philosophy vie for ultimate dominance (e.g., see Shia and Sunni Islam),
Hitler also loved his Mother. I assume anyone who loves their Mother is therefore a Fascist?
because they feel their particular version reveals the truth of their cause so much better. That the Hitler-Stalin Pact was established in 1939 was partially because both of them saw their movements as able to temporarily unite, by virtue of the governing philosophies that they did share, to fight their common enemy - Western market-driven capitalist democracies - which they both thought exploited their precious Proletariat or Volk.
You're not going to get me to defend any totalitarian form of government. The Stalin/Hitler Pact was one of convenience. Stalin fearing to have to fight Hitler alone, and Hitler fearing a two front war. This is a complex issue. Might as well call CHurchill a Communist because he was ahppy to become an ally of Stalin.
Between them, while exterminating millions in the name of their socialist systems, they mainly disputed only three things: 1) the mechanics of establishing a truly socialist state in the name of their "peoples," 2) the emphasis placed on race or other classifications in demonizing their minorities; Hitler preferred to demonize the Jews (also seen as firmly connected in **** propaganda to Capitalism, by the way), Gypsies, the handicapped and, later, Slavs, while Stalin preferred the bourgeoisie, Kulaks, Jewish doctors and various others, and 3) the nature of the state in terms of its geographical boundaries; Hitler wanted to define the world as a nationalist greater Germany, while Stalin, following Marx more closely, saw the world as a stateless whole, unified and ruled by a Dictator of the Proletariat (himself).
Fascism does not nationalize Private Property. In fact Private Property is the basis of Fascism. It's true that the only private property that was sacred was that owned by the large corporations. It's true that small owners did not share in this govbernment protection scheme. But such was and
IS the way Fascism function.
Plain and simple you cannot explain away the fact that large Corporations thrived under Hitler, Mussoline and Franco. All this gobblediguck about Hitler being a "Socialist" is a joke.
Big Business, a Tea Partier and Organized Labor are sitting around a table. A dozen cookies arrive on a plate. Big Business takes eleven of them and says to the Tea Partier, "Pssst! That union guy is trying to steal your cookie!"
Dave
