A Question of Political Philosophy
Last night, in Phil of Bio, I made the comment that Nazism is a form of Marxism (most obviously so in that 'Nazism' is an abbreviation of National Socialism, more correctly Nationalsozialismus). It could have been my imagination run amok or it could have in fact happened that when I did so, I heard sneers and gasps of disbelief.
My question is this. If Nazism is not in fact a form of Marxism, (or outgrowth, or direct product, or interpretation), then what is it?
It seems to me that once we make the claim that all property is to be distributed (evenly, or not) by some entity (governmental in the case of fascist Germany), it's only what most people colloquially call a 'semantical game' that we distinguish one form of distribution from another, i.e. 'Fascism' from 'Communism' from 'Socialism', etc.
Hitler and the crew chose to rob from a particular racial or ethnic group. How does that really distinguish them, in any meaningful sense, from Stalin, Chairman Mao, Trotsky, Lenin, or any of their more contemporary heirs (e.g. GW Bush, Gordon Brown, Vladimir Putin).
Maybe not a burning question in 21st century analytic philosophy, but a question nonetheless.
Smooches
1 comment:
Not sure why this was being discussed in Philosophy of Biology of all places, but anyway...Nazism is certainly a form of collectivism. Drawing distinctions between fascism, socialism, and communism is just a matter of how the society is collectivized. In so far as Marxism is also a form of collectivism, than Nazism and Marxism are related, if not similar. The Nazi replace class with race, the proletariat with the Volk. However, Marxism does have some distinctive elements to it: dialectical materialism; a particular (and grossly incorrect) view about history, human nature, social organization. I'm not sure that those are parts of Nazism.
In the end, they were all a bunch of murderous thugs, so these are just academic differences.
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