July 29 marks an infamous centennial. One hundred years ago—on July 29, 1921—Adolf Hitler assumed the leadership of the National Socialist German Workers Party, better known as the Nazis. It became his vehicle to power.
Though Hitler quoted Scripture early in his career when it was politically convenient (he lied often, incidentally), he also said the Bible was “a fairy tale invented by the Jews.” He appointed many vehement anti-Christians to high office; arrested, jailed, tortured and killed many priests and pastors; denied that Jesus was a Jew and even ordered a “new Bible” stripped of all references to Jews and Jewish history.
In the real Bible, Matthew 7:16 famously declares, “By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles?” What Hitler and Nazism produced—genocide, warfare, state control, and endless evil in many forms—constitutes the very antithesis of the teachings of Jesus.“Hitler admired the ceremony and majesty of the church—he admitted as much in Mein Kampf—but hated its teachings, which had no place in his vision of Germanic supermen ruling lesser races devoid of ‘outdated’ concepts such as mercy and love. But he knew the power of the church in Germany and even he could not banish it overnight. He was even forced to abandon the systematic murder of the handicapped and insane before the war when outspoken bishops began to speak against it. Instead, his plan was to gradually ‘Nazify’ the church beginning with a theological centre he set up in 1939 to rewrite the Holy Bible.”
Does that look like capitalism to any thoughtful, honest person with no agenda but the truth? Hardly.“The second pattern [of socialism] (we may call it the Hindenburg or German pattern) nominally and seemingly preserves private ownership of the means of production and keeps the appearance of ordinary markets, prices, wages, and interest rates. There are, however, no longer entrepreneurs, but only shop managers (Betriebsführer in the terminology of the Nazi legislation). These shop managers are seemingly instrumental in the conduct of the enterprises entrusted to them; they buy and sell, hire and discharge workers and remunerate their services, contract debts and pay interest and amortization. But in all their activities they are bound to obey unconditionally the orders issued by the government’s supreme office of production management. This office (The Reichswirtschaftsministerium in Nazi Germany) tells the shop managers what and how to produce, at what prices and from whom to buy, at what prices and to whom to sell. It assigns every worker to his job and fixes his wages. It decrees to whom and on what terms the capitalists must entrust their funds. Market exchange is merely a sham. All the wages, prices, and interest rates are fixed by the government; they are wages, prices, and interest rates in appearance only; in fact they are merely quantitative terms in the government’s orders determining each citizen’s job, income, consumption, and standard of living. The government directs all production activities. The shop managers are subject to the government, not the consumers’ demand and the market’s price structure.”
Michael Rieger argues that some of the confusion about how to label Nazi economics stems from socialism’s ever-shifting varieties. Socialists are notorious for claiming “this is it” when they’re just writing or daydreaming about it and then claiming “that wasn’t it” when it flops. Rieger writes,“They all claimed to be socialists. They all sought to concentrate power in the State and to glorify the State. They all stomped on individuals who wanted nothing more than to pursue their own ambitions in peaceful commerce. They all denigrated private property, either by outright seizure or regulating it to serve the purposes of the State.”
Rather than admit that Nazism was socialist and disastrous, diehard socialists declare “that wasn’t socialism.” It would be more honest if they just said, “Oops.” But they typically react the same way (in vehement denial) to failed socialist experiments everywhere, from the Soviet Union to Venezuela.“The wide variance between utopian socialism, communism, national socialism, and democratic socialism makes it remarkably easy for members of each ideology to wag their fingers at the others and say, “That wasn’t real socialism.” However, there is one common thread in each of these definitions of socialism. From Saint-Simon to AOC, all self-described socialists have shared the belief that top-down answers to society’s problems are superior to the bottom-up answers created by the free market.”
“Cases of socialism they don’t like: “Not true socialism.” Cases of capitalism they do like: “Not true capitalism.” Socialists always lose on economics, so they try to win with word play.”
That was Adolf Hitler in a 1931 interview with Richard Breiting. He said essentially the same thing a hundred times or more, and it is exactly what he carried out in practice. And it is as socialist as it gets. Nothing capitalist or free market about it.“The good of the community takes priority over that of the individual. But the State should retain control; every owner should feel himself to be an agent of the State; it is his duty not to misuse his possessions to the detriment of the State or the interests of his fellow countrymen. That is the overriding point. The Third Reich will always retain the right to control property owners.”
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“The Only Spectrum That Makes Sense” by Lawrence W. ReedThis article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.