5. Anti-Marxism
"Fascist nationalism is reactionary in that it entails implacable hostility to socialism and feminism, for they are seen as prioritizing class or gender rather than nation."
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Kevin Passmore, Fascism: A Very Short Introduction, 31.
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"... Hitler, to whom the judge had granted a degree of latitude unusual for a defendant, addressed the jurors at his trial for his part on the Beer-Hall putsch:
The National Socialist movement of what was then the Workers’ Party adopted as its first principle the realisation that the Marxist movement was to be fought to the end; second the realisation that the revolution [of 1918], as the consequence of Marxism and of an unprecedented criminal act was not a matter of the German bourgeoisie becoming national once more: the problem is that the German working people, the broad masses, must be made national again. That means not just a pure, I mean passive, relationship to nationalism, but an active fight against those who have ruined it until now. Besides, it is ridiculous to want to nationalise a people at a time when hundreds of thousands are working on all sides to de-nationalise the people, and these hundreds of thousands, who also brought about the revolution, do not even belong to the race. Thus the Marxist problem has become a racial problem, the most serious and deepest problem of the day" (140-41).
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What Is Marxist Socialism?
What Is Socialism?
"... the two dominant forms of socialism -- social democracy and communism."
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Michael Newman, Socialism -- A Very Short Introduction, 5; 46; 104.
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"All forms of socialism share some fundamental characteristic, or essence, by which the doctrine as a whole may be defined" (2).
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"In my view, the most fundamental characteristic of socialism is its commitment to the creation of an egalitarian society. ... In particular, socialists have maintained that, under capitalism, vast privileges and opportunities are derived from the hereditary ownership of capital and wealth at one end of the social scale, while a cycle of deprivation limits opportunities and influence at the other end. To varying extents, all socialists have therefore challenged the property relationships that are fundamental to capitalism, and have aspired to establish a society in which everyone has the possibility to seek fulfilment without facing barriers based on structural inequalities.
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"A second, and closely related, common feature of socialism has been a belief in the possibility of constructing an alternative egalitarian system based on the values of solidarity and cooperation. But this in turn has depended on a third characteristic: a relatively optimistic view of human beings and their ability to cooperate with one another. ... Nevertheless, socialists have always rejected views that stress individual self-interest and competition as the sole motivating factors of human behaviour in all societies at all times. They have regarded this perspective as the product of a particular kind of society, rather than as an ineradicable fact about human beings.
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"Finally, most socialists have been convinced that it is possible to make significant changes in the world through conscious human agency" (3).
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What Is Social Democracy?
"The raison d'etre of social democracy after the split with communism had been the claim that socialism could be implemented peacefully" (44; 49).
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What Is Communism?
What Is Communism?
Communism seeks to create a state where the proletariat, or the workers, are in charge of the economy and state through revolutionary means. Social democracy is where the workers seek to control the means of production, or the economy and its surplus, by working within the state through democratic or parliamentary means. This is referred to as evolutionary socialism, in contrast with revolutionary communism. So ever since the split in 1920 of socialism from communism, there has been a distinct difference between both communism and socialism. Communism and socialism are not the same thing. They are very different. Similarly, there is not one monolithic "socialism." There are different kinds of socialism, not just simply social democracy.
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Eduard Bernstein, Evolutionary Socialism
Leon Trotsky on
the Difference between Fascism and Communism
"Mussolini and Hitler are only 'coordinating' [gleichschaltung] the interests of the property owners and 'regulating' capitalist economy, and, moreover, primarily for war purposes. The Kremlin oligarchy is something else again: it has the opportunity of directing economy as a body only owing to the fact that the working class of Russia accomplished the greatest overturn of property relations in history. This difference must not be lost sight of.
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Leon Trotsky, In Defense of Marxism, 10.