Re: Was Hitler a Socialist?

On 8/25/26 2:04 PM, Noah Sombrero wrote:
> On Tue, 25 Aug 2026 13:36:21 -0400, Wilson <[email protected]>
> wrote:
> 
>> On 8/24/2026 2:18 PM, Julian wrote:
>>> Hitler was undoubtedly an anti-capitalist and a socialist in the modern
>>> sense of the word
>>>
>>>
>>> A recurring theme in Elon Musk’s posts on X in recent months has been
>>> his claim that Hitler was a socialist. He has received both a great deal
>>> of support and a great deal of criticism on the platform, but hardly any
>>> of those taking part in the debate have seriously examined the issue.
>>> Critics of the thesis point out that the means of production were not
>>> nationalized in National Socialist Germany. They also argue that the
>>> fact that Hitler had communists and Social Democrats imprisoned in
>>> concentration camps speaks against this thesis.
>>>
>>> The second argument is not convincing. Stalin, too, had tens of
>>> thousands of fellow communists murdered, denouncing many of them as
>>> “Trotskyists,” or “fascist agents.” But what about the argument that the
>>> means of production were not nationalized on a large scale in National
>>> Socialist Germany?
>>>
>>> For traditional socialism, which is based on the teachings of Karl Marx,
>>> the nationalization of the means of production is indeed the central
>>> objective. But National Socialism was a form of modern socialism that
>>> took a different approach.
>>>
>>> In May 1937 Hitler declared that he told German industry what it had to
>>> produce under the Four-Year Plan. If industry said it was unable to do
>>> so, he would “take that over myself, but it must be done.” If industry
>>> complied, however, he was glad not to have to take it over himself.
>>>
>>> That such statements by Hitler were not empty threats became clear to
>>> the industrialists no later than on 23 July 1937, when Göring announced
>>> the formation of the AG for Ore Mining and Iron Smelting Hermann Göring.
>>> The development which had begun with Hitler’s and Göring’s repeated
>>> threats finally led to the creation of the Reichswerke Hermann Göring,
>>> which by 1940 employed 600,000 people. The plant in Salzgitter finally
>>> became the largest in Europe.
>>>
>>> Some theorists – both on the left and among libertarians – recognized as
>>> early as the 1940s that National Socialism represented a new form of
>>> anti-capitalism. The economist and sociologist Friedrich Pollock had
>>> earned his doctorate with a dissertation on Karl Marx’s theory of money
>>> and was a co-founder of the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt
>>> am Main. Ludwig von Mises was known to be, together with von Friedrich
>>> August von Hayek, the most important representative of the Austrian
>>> School of National Economics. Both were staunch opponents of National
>>> Socialism and emigrated to the United States.
>>>
>>> In an article on the economic system of National Socialism published in
>>> 1941, Pollock acknowledged that the legal institution of private
>>> ownership had been maintained, but argued that its actual function had
>>> fundamentally changed. In his words, this amounted to “the destruction
>>> of all the essential traits of private ownership, saving one exception.”
>>> Even the largest companies, he noted, had lost the right to decide
>>> freely where to invest or when to discontinue unprofitable production;
>>> these rights had effectively been transferred to the ruling groups.
>>>
>>> This is one of the most lucid analyses of the economic structure of
>>> National Socialism, and it corresponds with what Ludwig von Mises wrote
>>> in The New York Times on June 21, 1941. Mises argued that the German
>>> system of socialism, or Zwangswirtschaft, retained some capitalist
>>> institutions only nominally. Private ownership formally continued, but
>>> entrepreneurs had effectively been reduced to the status of shop
>>> managers, while the government determined what and how they produced, as
>>> well as prices and trading partners. He summarized the system as
>>> “socialism with the outward appearance of capitalism” – comprehensive
>>> planning and government control of economic activity, while retaining
>>> the labels of a market economy.
>>>
>>>   From 1940 at the latest, Hitler increasingly became a proponent of the
>>> state planned economy – partly because he was convinced of the
>>> superiority of the Soviet Union and its economic system. In his
>>> monologues to his inner circle (known as “table talks”) on 27/28 July
>>> 1941, Hitler said that “A sensible employment of the powers of a nation
>>> can only be achieved with a planned economy from above.” About two weeks
>>> later, he remarked that economic planning was still at an early stage
>>> and envisioned building an encompassing German and European economic order.
>>>
>>> The statement that economic planning was still at a very early stage is
>>> important because it shows that Hitler was not thinking at all of a
>>> reduction of state intervention – not even for the time after the war –
>>> but, on the contrary, intended to expand the instruments of state
>>> control of the economy even further.
>>>
>>> Yes, Hitler was not a socialist in the classical Marxist sense. But he
>>> was undoubtedly an anti-capitalist and a socialist in the modern sense
>>> of the word. In this respect, Musk is right.
>>>
>>>
>>> Rainer Zitelmann
>>
>> Control is effectively ownership.
> 
> Oh, you mean like when you rent an apartment?

wilson doesn't know what usufruct is either

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hi, i'm nick!
let's end war 🙃