Mikhail Kalashnikov Dies

[GScholz]

During the Cold War, China unofficially allied itself with America against the Soviet Union. China and Vietnam had several border clashes. Vietnam invaded Communist Cambodia. Tito in Yugoslavia hated the Soviets and remained neutral. Castro in Cuba remained reluctantly pro-Soviet due to their total dependence on Soviet aid. Every single Soviet satellite republic in Europe and Asia hated the Soviets, and the only reason they stayed within the Soviet sphere of influence was the threat of Soviet military intervention... Something Hungary suffered in 1956. The last Soviet troops left Hungary in 1991, only months before the dissolution of the Soviet Union itself.

Just because the Nazis and Soviets hated each other and fought a war doesn't mean they were diametrically opposed politically. In fact the worst enemies are those who are only slightly different; we see this in both religious faiths and politics. Historically the Abrahamic religions hate each other the most, despite having the most in common compared to other religions. Only when facing a common enemy do socialist states stand together.

[GScholz]

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That's the thing about the AK: It's all the great infantry guns of the '40s combined into one.

[Motherland]

During the Cold War, China unofficially allied itself with America against the Soviet Union. China and Vietnam had several border clashes. Vietnam invaded Communist Cambodia. Tito in Yugoslavia hated the Soviets and remained neutral. Castro in Cuba remained reluctantly pro-Soviet due to their total dependence on Soviet aid. Every single Soviet satellite republic in Europe and Asia hated the Soviets, and the only reason they stayed within the Soviet sphere of influence was the threat of Soviet military intervention... Something Hungary suffered in 1956. The last Soviet troops left Hungary in 1991, only months before the dissolution of the Soviet Union itself.

To a large degree, people Soviet satellite states stood against the SU largely because they didn't want to have anything to do with socialism in the first place, not because they had some minor differences in ideology. The system was forced upon them. I don't see what that has to do with anything.
All international socialists picked bones with the Soviet Union because it was an extremely flawed implementation of a system that a lot of people thought would be the saving grace of humanity- especially while Stalin was at the helm. Just as how many people who are perfectly pro-capitalism despise the United States.
Comparing bickering and political posturing and infighting (which happens, no matter what system you're talking about) to the most cataclysmic battle in the entire breadth of human history
Doesn't quite follow

The political spectrum just isn't divided into 'right' (pro laissez faire capitalism) and 'wrong' (anti laissez faire capitalism), it's divided into right and left, as flawed and simplistic as that view may be. Almost all forms of government are in some way restrictive, but are completely unrelated. A highly traditional, extremely strict feudal monarchy with little personal freedom and complete control over the economy is not 'left' just because you consider laissez faire to be 'right'

The Abrahamic religions have the unfortunate circumstance of being in extremely close proximity to each other with constituents of their religions in constant contact. It doesn't work no matter what the religions, just look at India

[mthrockmor]

During the Cold War, China unofficially allied itself with America against the Soviet Union. China and Vietnam had several border clashes. Vietnam invaded Communist Cambodia. Tito in Yugoslavia hated the Soviets and remained neutral. Castro in Cuba remained reluctantly pro-Soviet due to their total dependence on Soviet aid. Every single Soviet satellite republic in Europe and Asia hated the Soviets, and the only reason they stayed within the Soviet sphere of influence was the threat of Soviet military intervention... Something Hungary suffered in 1956. The last Soviet troops left Hungary in 1991, only months before the dissolution of the Soviet Union itself.

Just because the Nazis and Soviets hated each other and fought a war doesn't mean they were diametrically opposed politically. In fact the worst enemies are those who are only slightly different; we see this in both religious faiths and politics. Historically the Abrahamic religions hate each other the most, despite having the most in common compared to other religions. Only when facing a common enemy do socialist states stand together.

Nazis were socialists. And by definition socialism is on the left of the spectrum.

Nazis hated and destroyed their enemies at every turn, whether fellow socialists or not. The fact that they hunted and murderd left wingers does not mean they were right wing. That is a fallacy and historic revision. Hitler even went after private sector labor unions, leaving only public sector labor unions. Does that mean he was right wing because he attacked private sector labor unions? Then what about his alliance with public sector unions, does that make him....what? In the end, he was able to control public sector unions and destroyed that which he could not control.

Nazism and Communism were both socialist ideologies espoused by dominant political parties. They are both very left of center, and yet hated each other. Hatred of communism does not make one right-wing. I've debated admitted socialists and marxists who insist that Mao was a capitalist pig. Funny, the rest of the world would laugh at that though when one is so far to the radical left that communist mass murdering Mao seems "to the right"...

[Motherland]

Nazis were socialists.

The NSDAP was not a socialist party. The core tenants of socialism include equality, pacifism and secular humanism/atheism. A party whose central ideals are nationalist racism, jingoistic militarism and a weird blend of German-pagan folklore and Christianity is one-hundred-percent incompatible with socialism. A state that believes that close cooperation with corporations is an ideal economic model is intrinsically non-socialist. As is a state that outlaws the entrance of women in the work force and rewards them for tending to the home and having children is anti-socialist. Socialist societies are egalitarian societies.
As previously stated, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea is not a Democratic Republic just because it says it is. The German Democratic Republic was not a Democratic Republic just because it said it was.

Hitler used the National Socialist movement before the term fascism was in widespread use. The name of the party did, of course, attract socialists, as well as Hitler's early views on socialism in the mid-to-late-20s, but Hitler came to hate all of them as his political ideology matured, calling them 'Marxist' (Hitler was ardently anti-Marxist of course), and by 1934 the socialist-sympathizing Nazis were completely purged from the party, often being murdered- in case you don't remember the "Night of the Long Knives" from history classes, this purge of the left (notably the murder of the leader of the left wing of the Nazi party, Gregor Strasser) from 1930s German politics is what it refers too.

(also, since when has disbanding labor unions been anti-capitalist? especially at a time when they were all headed by communists and socialists?)

“The government will not protect the economic interests of the German people by the circuitous method of an economic bureaucracy to be organised by the state, but by the utmost furtherance of private initiative and by the recognition of the rights of property.”~Adolf Hitler as the Chancellor of the Reichstag in 1933
Fascism is fascism. It's not socialism. Socialism is socialism.

[Oldman731]

The core tenants of socialism include equality, pacifism and secular humanism/atheism.

....um....where did you read that....?

- oldman

[Plawranc]

Socialism is a humanistic ideology, However it tends to be used to control.

[phatzo]

as a completely ignorant Brit, all I know is that the M16 is my personal choice for best looking gun of all time.

I thought you'd be more of a Gray-Nicolls man.

[mechanic]

never really got into cricket, had to google gray-nicolls. This is more my style

[Motherland]

....um....where did you read that....?

- oldman

Well I think that equality speaks for itself

Religion is generally considered to be a way for the ruling class to manipulate the working class. Of course there have been socialist movements that mix religion into it (the man who said 'it is easier for a camel to fit through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the gates of heaven' especially is pretty apt to be worked into a socialist ideology and Christian Socialist movements have been pretty widespread)

And the prolific phrase 'no war but class war' should also pretty much speak for itself


Departures from these ideals are why people tend to reject states such as the USSR (especially under Stalin) and the PRC as being actually 'socialist'

[mthrockmor]

Socialism was classically defined as total state control of the means of production. The more modern, 20th Century twist which became fascism was state via management of corporations, which divvied up the economy. As was famously stated, "Why own the cow when you can control the man who owns the cow." Mussolini called it "Corporatism" and scary enough many very prominent Americans loved it! In fact, Time Magazine named Hitler their Man of the Year for 1938, not because of his antisemitism but because of the "German miracle" brought about by their economic turnaround.

In every aspect of the German economy it was centrally controlled directly or indirectly. Your insistence in flavor as definition of socialism in consistent with about 70-years of whitewashing the socialist track record. Most socialists hate Nazism, but that doesn't make Nazis non-socialists.

"We are socialists, we are enemies of today's capitalistic economic system for the exploitation of the economically weak, with its unfair salaries, with its unseemly evaluation of a human being according to wealth and property instead of responsibility and performance, and we are all determined to destroy this system under all conditions."
Speech of May 1, 1927 as quoted in John Toland (1976),
Adolf Hitler: The Definitive Biography, p. 224

Many socialists fight the truth about Nazism. Historically, socialists have been so ashamed of Nazism they want it banished from the history books altogether. Interesting that while they hate Nazism they do their best to embrace Leninism and Maoism, mostly for the sake that those two radically ideologies attempted to spread their system of equality to other countries, international socialism. And since they cannot banish Nazism from the history books they attempt to re-brand it as 'right wing' and capitalism at its best. There is a similar, though much smaller mood about Mao and his 75 million murdered during his "Great Leaps Forward" during the Cultural Revolution. 99.9% of socialists oppose the whole 'murder 200 million of our own' during the 20th Century. It is a sad but undeniable part of the movement.

Good discussion, interesting, not the first time I've seen the refutation of the most obvious: Nazism was a rabid form of socialism, and I'll add, that most socialists hate.

[Motherland]

Hitler's idea of socialism in the 20s came from a German political movement called the 'Conservative Revolutionaries' which coined the terms 'Prussian Socialism' and 'National Socialism'.  The ideas of these terms were not to align themselves with socialists, but to combine two contradictory terms and characterize a form of revolutionary, anti-capitalist conservatism in the wake of the First World War. Nationalism and reactionary politics are completely, 100% incompatible with socialism, period. That's the point of the phrase. Any nationalist or monarchist or reactionary faction, whether completely laissez-faire, corporatist, or with a completely centrally planned economy is completely opposed to socialism at its core.
As I said, if you read Mein Kampf or Hitlers statements from before the Nazi party was a major force in German politics and started to really mature idealogically into the party that would lead the Third Reich, Hitler seems like a socialist as at the time he himself thought he was a socialist. But things aren't static. Hitler of 1932 or 1934 or 1939 or 1944 was not a socialist. He did not align himself with socialism.

The ideals of the Nazi party were not aligned with Marx or Engels or Lenin or Trotsky or Bakunin or Proudhon or any socialist or anarchist philosopher or movement at any point in history. The Nazis did not feud with socialists because they had minor differences with them, the entirety of their ideologies are completely opposed, other than the idea that free market capitalism is not an ideal economic system. That is the only common thread. And that is a common thread in many many political ideologies, the rest of which are not socialist either, except socialism/communism.

Also, what socialists embrace Maoism? Mao and Stalin were hated by the international socialists about the moment they took power. The PRC is widely considered to be a state capitalist country, not just among socialists. Trotsky has been 'the' real canonized figure in international socialism since Stalin took power.

I also don't know who has ever tried to 'banish Nazism from the history books'

[Oldman731]

Socialism was classically defined as total state control of the means of production.

Thank you.  Webster says:

Full Definition of SOCIALISM

1 any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods.

2 a :  a system of society or group living in which there is no private property.
   b :  a system or condition of society in which the means of production are owned and controlled by the state.

3 a stage of society in Marxist theory transitional between capitalism and communism and distinguished by unequal distribution of goods and pay according to work done.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/socialism

I think it's important to stay with common definitions; otherwise people start making up their own and the discussion devolves to people talking past each other.

- oldman

[GScholz]

Motherland, Socialism is an economic system, not a complete sociopolitical system. Socialism is an economic system characterised by social ownership of the means of production and co-operative management of the economy. National Socialism certainly had a heavy hand in controlling the German economy. Socialism comes in many different varieties: The typical Scandinavian model is the social-democracy, where economic socialism is mixed with a democratic political structure. National Socialism was a social-militaristic dictatorship, where economic socialism was mixed with a nationalistic dictatorship.

In my country the party that is the most nationalistic, anti-EU, anti-NATO, anti-Globalisation, is the Sosialist Left Party: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sosialistisk_Venstreparti

[mthrockmor]

Again, Baptist, Methodists, and Church of Christ will argue for a life-time between their differing views of the Bible. While Jews, Muslims and Atheists may find their passionate bantering interesting they will all see it as one mass of Christianity.

The same here. Maoists, Lenists, Nazis, etc argue debate (and as many socialists are want to do) mass murder each other, all the while insisting their flavor of central government is pure, the others false. In the end...all socialists.