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January 16, 2009
The Road To Serfdom
Have you ever wondered if the German National Socialists were really right wing? Well now you can find out by reading the Readers Digest Condensed Version of The Road to Serfdom which is downloadable at no cost from a link at the page. You should use the Save As function and title the file The Road To Serfdom.pdf. The Institute of Economic Affairs which hosts "The Road..." has other interesting economic publications and videos at its site. You might also like The Illustrated Version which you can open in a browser window or tab. It is hosted by The Ludwig von Mises Institute. You can get an actual book by following this link The Road to Serfdom: Text and Documents--The Definitive Edition (The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek) So were the Nazis right wing? Only compared to the communists. H/T alexjrgreen At Talk Polywell. Cross Posted at Power and Control posted by Simon on 01.16.09 at 10:24 AM
Comments
I don't see it as a "right wing-left wing" thing. That terminology makes no sense at all without specifying time and place. "Freedom versus Socialism" makes sense to me, I am in favor of the firs and opposed to the second, everywhere, always, and without regard to details of the Socialism or knowing which Socialist wants to be in front. ("communism" to my mind is a special case of "Socialism.) Larry Sheldon · January 16, 2009 03:25 PM Larry, Hayek makes a point in "Serfdom" of counting the USSR and Germany of the time as socialist variants. One of the reasons I like the book so much is the wealth of detail in his comparisons. M. Simon · January 16, 2009 03:59 PM I always felt that the similarity between "National Socialism" and Stalin's "Socialism in one state" was not coincidental. Jackson Laurence · January 16, 2009 04:45 PM Tburg's analogy, borrowed or not, is good. I tend to simply divide socialism into international and state. Nearly all socialist regimes give lip service to international socialism. "Solidarity with the workers" and such crapola. In reality nearly all prove state socialists first and foremost. As some noted, Left and Right have become meaningless labels. Liberal and Conservative ditto. They once meant something somewhere. So did Progressive and Labor. Stalin was just a power seeker who used words as tools. He used "socialism in one state" when it helped him deal with the internationalists. He was equally willing to use internationalism against state socialists. It didn't matter. Hitler believed in the Germanic peoples as a master race. At heart he didn't care about labor or business or socialism or internationalism. He cared about race. The world was an arena and the game was force and his team was the Volk. K · January 16, 2009 06:59 PM The question "is Fascism right wing?" can only be answered after defining what left and right mean. Not convoluted or idiosyncratic definitions, but clear concise ones. Without which there is confusion about left and right, as well as conservative and liberal and how they relate. Liberal does not equal left-wing as might be supposed, nor is conservative the same as right-wing. Left and right are unrelated to conservative and liberal. In fact, conservative and liberal are unrelated. Conservative: tending to favor the preservation of the existing order and distrust or resistance of proposals for change. Opposite of conservative is... Radical: favoring or effecting sweeping, revolutionary change. Liberal: views or policies that favor the freedom of individuals to act or express themselves as of their own choosing. Opposite of liberal is... Authoritarian: characterized by or favoring obedience to authority, as against individual freedom. Left: society or philosophy based on materialist determinsm. Right: society or philosophy based on cultural determinsm. Leftists basically believe the proper use and distribution of material leads to a better human existence, a just society. For instance, the results of distribution are the moral good. (Ends justify means.) Rightists basically believe a shared moral ethos leads to a better human existence, a just society. For instance, the method of distribution is the moral good. (Means justify ends.) Communist policies are for the redistribution of wealth and control of production. Fascists are for the redistribution of people and control of re-production. Both Communists and Fascists had authoritarian materialist programs as the basis of society. In one case the material of wealth, in the other human genetic material. They are both left-wing. They are both authoritarian. And both are radical. Those favoring retaining the Judeo-Christian or Anglosphere free society based on equal treatment under the law are conservative, liberal and right-wing. At its historical beginning, the Right-Left designation was the division of parliament with the supporters of the government on right side of the chamber and the opposition seeking change on the left. Essentially this was a conservative-radical (for-against) divide. Only later was this labeling applied to group like-minded parties on a sort-of scale. By this type of for-against reckoning Communists and Fascists, being mortal enemies, would seem to naturally be at opposite ends. However, Libertarianism opposes Communism and Fascism alike. If Left-Right were a for-against divide it would need three ends in this case. Toss in anarchists, monarchists, Islamicists, and the like and there'll be even more ends. An either/or lineup only has two ends, a multi-polar for-against hypothesis is unworkable. In the end there are three, unrelated scales. Conservative-radical, liberal-authoritarian, left-right. I could explain this all more fully in depth, this is the condensed version. After all, this is the comments section, not an essay. T M Colon · January 17, 2009 11:58 AM Post a comment
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The best way, I think, to understand these things is to thing of a capitol 'T'. The bottom of the post is capitalism. The top the post is socialism. The crossbar represents socialist extremes; Communism on the left and National Socialism on the right. I have borrowed this from somewhere else, with apologies. It really does make the most sense.
Thanks for all your posts, Classical Values.