Saturday, September 30, 2017

Mises on Nazi Germany: A Left Wing Socialist Ideology

"The philosophy of the Nazis, the German National Socialist Labour Party, is the purest and most consistent manifestation of the anti-capitalistic spirit of our age....

"These [Socialist] parties proclaim income equality as the main thing. The Nazis do the same....  They aim at a fairer distribution of the earth's natural resources.  As a 'have not' nation, they look at the wealth of the richer nations with the same feelings with which many people in the western countries look at the higher incomes of some of their countrymen.  The 'progressives' in the Anglo-Saxon countries assert that 'liberty is not worth having' for those who are wronged by the comparative smallness of their incomes.  The Nazis say the same with regard to international relations....

"For more than seventy years the German professors of political science, history, law, geography and philosophy eagerly imbued their disciples with a hysterical hatred of capitalism, and preached the war of 'liberation' against the capitalistic West....

"The Nazis were quick to adopt the Soviet methods.  They imported from Russia: the one-party system and the pre-eminence of this party in political life; the paramount position assigned to the secret police; the concentration camps; the administrative execution or imprisonment of all opponents; the extermination of the families of suspects and of exiles; the methods of propaganda; the organization of affiliated parties abroad and their employment for fighting their domestic governments and for espionage and sabotage; the use of the diplomatic and consular service for fomenting revolution; and many other things besides.  There were nowhere more docile disciples of Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin than the Nazis were."

~ Ludwig von Mises, 1947
"Planned Chaos"
Published in the 1951 edition of Mises's Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis, pp. 578-580

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