BRUTE wrote: ↑Thu Jul 12, 2018 12:55 am
admittedly, national + socialism is literally what nazi means.
However, although that might fit on a meme, it is not figuratively what it means or meant.
It's crucial to understand the terminology within its historical context.
The socialism in the nazi context has to do with the class struggle. As socialism is understood in the US (presently and then) and how it was understood in Europe in the early 20th century, the classes of concern were economic classes and the idea behind socialism was to fight those who were richer, etc. so big business, the bourgeoisie (what we'd call the elite today), and bankers. That is, "take from the rich capitalists and give to the poor workers".
The nazis (national socialist german workers party(+) or NSDAP) recruited heavily out of DAP (essentially a populist platform) in order to draw people away from the communist side (which was a real competing worldview back then). The nazis changed the focus from an economic class struggle to a nationalist class (=racial) struggle in which the "master race" were in a fight against other races. That is, "take from other races and give to the master race" --- hence the whole lebensraum and endloesung thing.
(+) A name that's practically a smorgasbord of words an average voter in the 1930s would like.
This national socialism is not nationalism and socialism. Rather, nazism is the idea of the class struggle but along racial/national lines.
Also note that in practical terms, the nazis had no problem with big business and elites. Hitler hated Stalin and the feeling was mutual. This is also why Roosevelt wasn't too worried about a unified Eurasia under so-called socialist control. He knew they hated each other. Recall that in 1940 Germany and Russia had signed a non-aggression pact and they controlled the entire continent from the Pacific to the Atlantic.
Post-WWII, ideologies changed and most are now better described as neo-something. Adding neo- in front of something usually adding a few twists to the classical (or paleo-) version of it.
Many Americans, maybe particularly the older generations, think of socialism in the 1950s cold-war style. In modern parlance, that would be called communism. Thus it's highly confusing when the US-left talk about being socialist or democratic socialists, or Nordic style socialism... Those groups are literally talking about two different things without realizing it.
So there are three additional kinds of socialism to understand.
Marxist-socialism = what older Americans think of when they hear the word socialism. This means a top-down hierarchical system in which the state owns the productive facilities and a party ("The Communist Party") decides how they're used.
Democratic-socialism = there are some on the US-left who advocate this. Not many countries have a working model of this although several South American ones pretend to. Again, the state would own all productive facilities (if not, they'd nationalize and take them over) but the people would decide how they're used by a democratic process. This is also called Corbynism.
Social democracy = in which productive means stay in private hands and the capitalist economy remains a foundation. The democracy part comes in when laws are made to regulate the economy to achieve the ends of socialism (the class struggle thing) via peaceful(*) (i.e. voting) means. To rephrase, the idea is to achieve socialism by democratic means such as making laws that regulate the capitalist enterprises. The government does not control the productive means directly, but it does control a percentage of the profits by taking it as taxes.
Most developed countries are social democracies to various degrees. A national health care system like e.g. Medicare is an example. Also the highway system, the police, or the military. Social democracies have mixed economies and you can more or less tell what the degree by how much of GDP is spent by the government. For example, the US government spends about 1/3 of GDP. The Danish government spends about 1/2 of GDP.
(*) This is in contrast to the Leninist belief in a revolutionary change by breaking the existing system in order to build a new one.
So for example, a Leninist-marxist-socialist believes that the end goal is one-party rule over nationalized production achieved by revolutionary means. And to bring it back, those are the ones the nazies wanted to fight when they strategically recruited out of the DAP by reframing the message.
Note that nazism is always placed on the right-side of the political spectrum (because the class struggle was not economic but nationalist).
Of other ideologies that include nationalism, we have
Neo-nationalism = against globalization, for [trade] protectionism, and opposition to immigration (nativism)
(contrast with paleo-nationalism which is more like patriotism and doesn't have a problem with international trade nor immigration)
national populism = neo-nationalism combined with populism, i.e. populism along nationalist lines. Populism is simply anti-elite and thus anti-establishment. IOW, national populists are against the current international system (aka the "liberal(*) world order") with its free trade and potential movement of immigrants and workers.
(*) If you're American,
this word does not technically mean what you think it means.
There are of course Leninist approaches to this as well as democratic (as used in "social democracy"), so ...
Leninist national populism = achieving the ends of national populism by unilaterally tearing up the old system.
democratic national populism = achieving the ends of national populism by voting to change the old system.
Note that no populists like to self-declare as populists... as far as I know, there are no parties with "populist" in the party name. Instead look for party-words like "People's" or "Workers" or "[Your Country's]".
Since democracy is once again fading in the world, it should also be contrasted with authoritarianism or autocracies. (Maybe in the future, we can replace it with AI from our friendly robot overlords.) Authoritarianism exists in degrees (like social democracies) and so think of it as low-intensity democracy... Another term for this is illiberal (as invented by Orban in Hungary) ... where the term liberal is actually used correctly.
The nazis were authoritarian(*). China is an example of an authoritarian marxist socialist state but one that allows a controlled form of capitalism, so beginning to lean social democratic. Populists are, however, not necessarily authoritarian. Fascism is also authoritarian ... and has a fairly technical description as well. After WWII, the word fascist became and insult and much like populist, there are no parties with the word fascist in their party name.
(*) Which means they could/would be neither democratic socialists nor social democrats.
fascism = nationalism and authoritarianism ... which you can piece together from above. It's basically one nation under one leader ("ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Fuehrer") who alone can fix it. This includes a mixed economy (see social democracy) which is under control of that leader in service of the leader.
neo-fascism = combines neo-nationalism populism and (illiberal) authoritarianism ... (This comes in two varieties ... the Leninist approach and the democratic one, i.e. move fast and break stuff or build on what you have).
Anyhoo ... my point is that terminology is more complex than what fits on a meme. Also that you will rarely if ever see contemporary politicians or practical people do raw copy to re-enact some old ideology. Instead people either find inspiration in old ideologies or within themselves to pursue a new/neo-ideology that rhymes with an old ideology but doesn't repeat it exactly.