The Economics of Nazism

I was inspired to do this post based on a comment thread on this post http://imgur.com/gallery/g71JM regarding the use of the word Nazi. It’s something I’ve been thinking about for a while: how often terms like Socialism, National Socialism, and Communism are used interchangeably in our political discourse - even though these systems are very different from each other.

This post is mainly going to look at the ECONOMIC principles of Nazism rather than the entire ideology. Many of these beliefs are already familiar to us: Antisemitism, white nationalism, the cult of violence, and I don’t think need to be retread. Instead, I want to focus on the parts of Fascism/Nazism that are most often misunderstood.

A quick note on the relationship between Fascism, Nazism, and National Socialism. National Socialism and Nazism are the same thing. “Nazi” is simply an abbreviation based on the German pronunciation of “national” (as in Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei). Nazism is a type of Fascism. Nazism is unique in its focus on anti-Semitism and white supremacy, but otherwise shares all the beliefs of Fascism. For simplicity’s sake, when referring to the political ideology of Hitler and the Nazis, I will only use the term Nazism.

Lots of people try to simplify Socialism to mean state control and describe things like the police, roads, or single payer health care as “Socialist” because it’s the government that controls them. The reality is a bit more complicated than that.

What makes a government or society Socialist is not STATE control of production (factories, infrastructure, etc); it’s WORKER control. You could very well have a government that is Socialist IF the workers control it. However, a government that is authoritarian CANNOT be Socialist because power is in the hands of a dictator or an oligarchy, not the workers. This lack of worker control makes these regime types Capitalist - either State Capitalist or a mixed system.

A Nazi propaganda poster depicting a Jewish man working behind the scenes to manipulate Germany’s enemies. The caption reads: “Here behind the hostile powers: the Jew”

While Hitler took steps to gather support among German workers, Nazism rejects most of the basic tenets of Socialist theory expressed by Marx. In particular, Nazism rejects the idea of international class struggle and instead gives it a nationalist/racial bent. German workers are not struggling against the bourgeois capitalist class, but rather, foreign usurpers. Hitler blamed foreign countries and ethnic minorities in Germany for undermining the German economy and stealing jobs and opportunities from native Germans.

Also central to Nazism is the fact that this “empowerment” of the workers was ultimately to mobilize Germany for war. Hitler argued that the revitalization of the German economy was necessary to turn Germany into a world power and “take back” what he believed to be rightful German lands. This included seizing property from ethnic minorities inside Germany and invading and conquering the German Lebensraum (living space.) However, the workers were NOT given control of production when Germany made these seizures. Much of the economic growth that Germany enjoyed in the years leading up to WWII was diverted to military expansion.

Although Nazism contains anti-capitalist criticism, it does not criticize capitalism for the same reasons that Socialism or Communism does. Hitler again, racialized his arguments, describing the modern capitalist system as a Jewish conspiracy, which he criticized the Weimar Republic for being complicit in.

While Hitler rejected a free, international market, private ownership of production was still permitted and, in some industries, encouraged. The Nazi government negotiated with private businessmen and industrialists to create cartels - privately owned, cooperatives protected from competition in exchange for heavy government influence over production.

The most famous example of cartelism is probably Porsche: a privately owned auto manufacturer that was commissioned by the Nazis to design the Volkswagen Beetle as seen in the image above.

Due to the continued presence of private ownership of production (albeit with state intervention) and limited worker influence, the economic beliefs of Nazism are center-right and definitely not Socialist.

As for whether or not participants of the “Unite the Right” rally are true Nazis: most of these economic beliefs are very similar to ones espoused by the alt-right. There’s deep skepticism in Neoliberal institutions like finance and free trade, and Antisemitism is replaced with anti-immigrant sentiment. Given the prevalence (though not universality) of Nazi symbols (flags, armbands, salutes) and language (chants like “The Jews will not replace us” and “Blood and Soil”) at the very least the participants are Fascists and Nazi Sympathizers, if not full-blown Nazis.

Betta Tax - thank you for reading; I hope you found it interesting and informative! No dog or cat for me, but Abzu here is pretty chill.