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Three War Economic Systems


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I'm not confused at all...

 

"...But what then is Fascism?

 

Fascism, at any rate the German version, is a form of capitalism that borrows from Socialism just such features as will make it efficient for war purposes. Internally, Germany has a good deal in common with a Socialist state. Ownership has never been abolished, there are still capitalists and workers, and ? this is the important point, and the real reason why rich men all over the world tend to sympathize with Fascism ? generally speaking the same people are capitalists and the same people workers as before the Nazi revolution. But at the same time the State, which is simply the Nazi Party, is in control of everything. It controls investment, raw materials, rates of interest, working hours, wages. The factory owner still owns his factory, but he is for practical purposes reduced to the status of a manager. Everyone is in effect a State employee, though the salaries vary very greatly. The mere efficiency of such a system, the elimination of waste and obstruction, is obvious. In seven years it has built up the most powerful war machine the world has ever seen.

 

But the idea underlying Fascism is irreconcilably different from that which underlies Socialism. Socialism aims, ultimately, at a world-state of free and equal human beings. It takes the equality of human rights for granted. Nazism assumes just the opposite. The driving force behind the Nazi movement is the belief in human inequality..."

Edited by Social Democratic Confederation (see edit history)
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In Germany "National Socialism" was used.

Fascism, was first used by Mussolini in Italy. I suppose I would have to use this form of government since it's more well known. Then again if I were to use National Socialism in my nation I would probably called a nazi.

 

Very good explanation might I add SDC.

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You could hardly equate socialism with fascism, especially as they lie at completely different ends of the political spectrum. And Communism, true Communism, is entirely different to the totalitarian state fostered by Uncle Joe.

 

I also don't understand why you're doing this whole "war economic systems" thing, as I thought the original was about the whole right vs. left thing, not different methods of control over the economy during all-out war.

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There is a difference between Fascism and fascism. Capital "F" is Italian. The latter is applicable to many nations. National Socialism is indeed a form of socialism, simply one that has different objectives than that of Marxian Socialism (as mentioned above). War-Socialism and Fascism were quite similar...

 

You're right; Marxian Communism and Stalinist Communim (he called it War-Communism) are nothing alike. Also, the political spectrum is a two-dimensional thing. The distance between Stalin and Hitler on one such graph is rather minute.

 

 

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[stalin] called it War-Communism

I've read that War-Communism applied more to the practices Lenin and the like pursued during the Russian Civil War, rather than the "Great Patriotic War" of Stalin, although I could be entirely wrong in that respect.

 

Plus, the SA was stamped out (amongst other reasons, I must add) because it wished to bring in more Socialist policies for the Nazi government - indeed, it was these which did give the National Socialists a big following before they properly secured power, as it meant that they, on the one hand, supoorted the workers and also supported the big businesses. Hitler got rid of these once he realised that he'd need the upper classes for the pursuit of a war.

 

By the by, no-one can accuse the Nazi system of being efficent. Hitler purposefully played off different ministries and organisations off against each other, even going as far as to make different ministries responsible for the same job. It was a ruddy joke, and did do a lot to screw up the war effort. The Germans were by no means ready to conduct a full-scale war in 1939. It until the early 1940s for the German economy to be fully geared up for a total war, by which time they'd already dropped the clanger of invading the USSR.

 

The whole idea that Hitler and the Nazi were responsible for bringing Germany out of its depression has recently come up for debate. Research is pointing out that the nation was slowly working its way out of its rut without the intervention of the Nazis.

 

EDIT: Forgot a big reason why the SA was got rid of, namely that they were becoming too powerful.

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So Lenin's NEP was more geared toward war than Stalin's part in the Cold War?

 

The argument I make about National Socialism being a form of Socialism is exactly what I said... is a form of capitalism that borrows from Socialism just such features as will make it efficient for war purposes. Internally, Germany has a good deal in common with a Socialist state. Ownership has never been abolished, there are still capitalists and workers, and ? this is the important point, and the real reason why rich men all over the world tend to sympathize with Fascism ? generally speaking the same people are capitalists and the same people workers as before the Nazi revolution. But at the same time the State, which is simply the Nazi Party, is in control of everything. It controls investment, raw materials, rates of interest, working hours, wages. The factory owner still owns his factory, but he is for practical purposes reduced to the status of a manager. Everyone is in effect a State employee, though the salaries vary very greatly. The mere efficiency of such a system, the elimination of waste and obstruction, is obvious. In seven years it has built up the most powerful war machine the world has ever seen.

 

I didn't say fascism IS socialism. Rather it just borrows enough to make it more efficient for one puprose--war. State control of investment, raw materials, rates of interest, working hours, and wages does give it a tie to socialism. The state ran the machine, the machine was geared for war. In our conception of socialism, its the same (in this aspect), except the machine is geared for providing people with what they need.

 

I will say the Nazi system was more efficient than that of say... England at the same time. More so than America. But the scale of America's production power and the two-front thing drove Hitler into the ground. Even after most of Germany had been levelled by Allied bombing, it's rate of production was only partially affected until the end of the war (history channel). The downing of the SA by the SS was, I think, just a fluke of a thing in Germany. I've not heard or read that the SA was removed for pushing socialist ideals on the government. You could be right about it, but I've not been exposed to that idea until now.

 

 

..."What this war has demonstrated is that private capitalism ? that is, an economic system in which land, factories, mines and transport are owned privately and operated solely for profit ? does not work. It cannot deliver the goods... It is not certain that Socialism is in all ways superior to capitalism, but it is certain that, unlike capitalism, it can solve the problems of production and consumption. At normal times a capitalist economy can never consume all that it produces, so that there is always a wasted surplus (wheat burned in furnaces, herrings dumped back into the sea etc. etc.) and always unemployment. In time of war, on the other hand, it has difficulty in producing all that it needs, because nothing is produced unless someone sees his way to making a profit out of it.

 

...Therefore, a species of war-Socialism exists within the German state...However horrible this system may seem to us, it works. It works because it is a planned system geared to a definite purpose, world-conquest, and not allowing any private interest, either of capitalist or worker, to stand in its way. British capitalism does not work, because it is a competitive system in which private profit is and must be the main objective. It is a system in which all the forces are pulling in opposite directions and the interests of the individual are as often as not totally opposed to those of the State."

 

I would guess that Hitler playing his ministries against one another was more a side-effect of his paranoia rather than economic philisophy. By 1939 Germany was ready for it's war in Poland and France. If he would had stopped there for a while, we all might be speaking a different language and working in a camp near Munich for having this discussion.

 

It is true; during the last Weimar days, the problems of self-inflicted inflation were going decreasing. Thus, repsectively, the economy was getting better. But the idea of getting all the way out of the depression without planning their economy doesn't seem likely.

Edited by Social Democratic Confederation (see edit history)
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