perfidy

If the term hegemony is more acceptable than empire, I'll let it go at that. The United States has a hegemony rather than informal imperialism. But I'll make my final statement on this that American hegemony looks an awful lot like British informal imperialism. 

I have previously conceded that some parts of the world voluntarily adopt aspects of American culture. I was not insisting that western European nations have had McDonald's forced on them. I hope I've made that clear. 

Communism and the Origins of Fascism and Nazism 

Steve, you can read this when you get back from the shower. I'm sure you'll survive. I'm going to get fairly specific with this, so here it is. This is going to be quite extensive, but I'll ask you to please read it in its entirety when you have the time. I might suggest printing it out in lieu of reading it onscreen. 

According to strict Marxist letter of the law, the Bolsheviks in Russia could not be socialist because they had not yet experienced the bourgeois overthrow of the feudal aristocrats and the institution of a market economy. Lenin realized this, and instituted the New Economic Policy, which was essentially a market economy. It was still in place when Lenin suffered his stroke, thus he never instituted a socialist economy. Stalin later abandoned Marxist doctrine whole hog when he declared the legitimacy of socialism in one state. According to Marx, the worker's revolution that achieved the final stage of the dialectic had to be global. Anything less was not Communism. Since the global worker's revolution never happened, Communism never happened. Leaders who referred to themselves as Communist were liars. 

Economic planning in the Third Reich was not exactly centrally planned. Having worked as a Teaching Assistant on the second half of western civilization courses (C. 1700-present) twice, and having taught the course myself as an adjunct once, not to mention the slew of European, German, and Russian history courses I've taken as a college student and graduate student, this is what I've found. Adolf Hitler followed Benito Mussolini's economic strategy, known as Corporatism. Corporatism organized similar branches of industry into cartels, hence there was a steel cartel, an automobile cartel, a railway cartel, etc. Under Corporatism, the Fascists and Nazis maintained private ownership of the means of production, which flies in the face of Marxist doctrine. According to Marx, ownership of the means of production is transferred to the workers after the global revolution. Stalin and his ilk were fake communists because they transferred the means of production to the state, not the workers. "All power to the Soviets [worker's councils]" was a mantra of the Russian Revolution, upon which the Bolsheviks and later Stalin never made good. Corporatism also maintained that goods produced by cartels were dictated by the Party and thus the national leadership, whereas Marx asserted that the workers would have complete control over the means of production, including what goods were produced. This is as centrally planned as the Fascist/Nazi economies ever got. 

As to the comparisons you have drawn between Nazis and Communists, who I deem fake Communists, I must respectfully point out that they are partially on and partially off the mark. Nazis hated Jews not only because they were not German, but also because Nazis were crazy. I’m sure you accept this and even implied it. But fake Communists claimed that they hated Jews because Jews engaged in bourgeois nationalism that was antithetical to the spirit of internationalism required by socialism and Marxist doctrine. This is a case of fake Communists paying lip service to Marxist doctrine, when in fact they hated Jews, like the Nazis, because they were crazy and as a holdover of Tsarist era Russian/Georgian/Belorussian, etc. anti-semitism There were actual Communists who remained committed to global revolution, such as Leon Trotsky, however, who were opposed to Jewish identity because it represented bourgeois nationalism. Trotsky, whose mother named him Lev Davidovitch Bronstein (I'm sure you can do the math), epitomized this position. In 1903, when questioned by Vladimir Medem, "You consider yourself either a Russian or a Jew?" Trotsky responded, "No, you are wrong. I am a Social Democrat and only that." (Nora Levin, The Jews in the Soviet Union Since 1917, volume 1, 10). 

Fake Communists believed that everyone should become Communist then die. I prefer the Soviet uniforms because the Nazi culture of death emblazoned on their SS uniforms creeps me out. 

I must respectfully disagree with your father, who is certainly a most eminent historian who I was honored to meet, on the subject of Fascism/Nazism as an evolution from the left. I'm sure you'll understand that even upstart historians such as myself often disagree with established, eminent historians such your father. In this case, it is not done from vitriol or malice but purely professional. 

Fascism and Nazism grew out of several factors. They include but are not necessarily limited to disaffected populations who lost faith in humanity, those who were disgusted by the hedonism of inter-war popular culture, the collective shell-shock of Europe following the trauma of World War I, the economic dislocation of the inter-war years, the yearning for stability among Italian and German people, and the weakness of the Italian monarchy and Weimar republic. To say that Fascism and Nazism are a result of socialism, I respectfully submit, is monocausal. I have yet to hear a monocausal explanation that I deem valid, and that includes the Marxist interpretation of history. Perhaps it was not intended as a monocausal explanation, but it is certainly an oversimplification. 

Perhaps your father's position stems from the fact that many argue Mussolini was a Socialist. I must respectfully disagree. He was a member of the party, but did not believe in what the Socialists believed. Mussolini was a Syndicalist, not a Socialist. He was dismissed from his position as editor of Avanti!, a Socialist newspaper, in 1914, and dismissed because he supported an international war, specifically the Great War, of course. As Marx argued, war between nations is illegitimate; it does not advance the proletariat in their struggle to achieve control. International war benefits only the bourgeois masters of the Proletariat. Thus, class war is the only just war. I submit, Mussolini was a nationalist Syndicalist, not an international socialist. 

Hitler was no Socialist. I reiterate, the presence of the word Socialist in the National Socialist German Worker's Party was due to its founding members, the Strasser brothers, who were left of center. When Hitler seized control of the party he left the word Socialist in the title, but eventually expelled all left of center members of the party. He also molded the party according to his own vision, which consisted of a Corporatist, not Socialist economic strategy. I reiterate again, as Socialism is international, the title National Socialist is mutually exclusive. 

It is actually easier to describe Fascism and Nazism as what they were not, rather than what they were. Fascism was anti-Socialist, anti-Communist, anti-liberal, anti-democratic, anti-international free trade capitalism and banking.So, how could Fascism and Nazism have been Socialist/Communist anti-Socialists and anti-Communists? Nazis battled Socialists and Communists in the streets of Weimar Berlin. Mussolini ordered his Squadristi to attack Socialists and Communists, and destroy their offices, newspapers, and homes. 

The base of support for both Fascism and Nazism, in addition, did not come from Socialist or Communist sympathizing urban proletariat, rural agricultural laboring classes, or even left-wing intellegentsia, but from people who feared and hated Socialism and Communism. Fascism and Nazism were supported by traditionally right-wing people who weren't reactionary monarchists, such as violent war veterans, disaffected members of the middle classes and highly skilled laborers, wealthy people who feared Socialism and Communism as threats to their wealth, and yeoman farmers. Thus, the base of support for Fascism and Nazism came not from Socialists but from traditionally conservative (as opposed to reactionary monarchist) elements of the German and Italian populaces. 

But the Nazis and Fascists were not really right-wing, or even just conservative either. All this is prologue to the argument of another established historian, Robert O. Paxton. In his work, Europe in the Twentieth Century, Paxton argued that Fascism, while erroneously considered a right-wing political and economic practice. Paxton wrote that, Fascism was not simply the far right. The terms right and left were first applied to politics during the French Revolution. They belong to the political vocabulary of nineteenth-century struggles over popular sovereignty, individual liberties, and property. With fascist movements, we find ourselves in a strange landscape where familiar signposts like right and left do not give very precise directions (232). 

I therefore refute the thesis that Fascism was an outgrowth of Socialism. That is not the case. I will follow this post with a brief bibliography of sources I have consulted. While many of them are convenient surveys, they are nonetheless quite reliable. The Otto Friedrich is a bit dodgy on some things, but fairly reliable as to the Nazis, and I have corroborated what he wrote with other sources. I will add that my last 10 years in dogged efforts to learn this information has assisted immeasurably. Many thanks to historians Glenn Sharfman, PhD, Hiram College; Bernard Weiss, PhD, Duquesne University, and Steven Vardy, PhD, Duquesne University. 

Bibliography 

De Jonge, Alex. Weimar Chronicle: Prelude to Hitler. New York: New American Library, 1978. 

Flood, Charles Bracelen. Hitler: The Path to Power. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Press, 1989. 

Friedrich, Otto. Before the Deluge: A Portrait of Berlin in the 1920s. New York: Perennial, 1995 (reprint). 

Levin, Nora. Paradox of Survival: The Jews in the Soviet Union Since 1917, Volume 1. New York: New York University Press, 1988. 

Paxton, Robert O. Europe in the Twentieth Century. New York: Harcourt Brace College Publishers, 1997. 

Stromberg, Roland N. Europe in the Twentieth Century. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1992. 

Suny, Ronald Grigor. The Soviet Experiment: Russia, the USSR, and the Successor States. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.