User talk:WHEELER/National Socialism/draft

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This is a work in progress. This is only a beginning. This is to trace the general outlines of developement of Socialism with nationalism as an ideology. If you have anything to add or corroborate, Please do so. Nazism is a "species" of the National Socialism. National Socialism as an article should stand alone because it is a "Genus".

Disclaimer: This is not about replacing the Fascism or Nazism article. This article deals only with the creation of nationalist socialist as an ideology before Hitler and Mussolini. It is in no way an article that replaces these two articles. This is about the *pre-history* and its different manifestations throughtout the world. The substance of this article stops where Mussolini and Hitler took over their respective parties".

National Socialism is a revolutionary ideology, movement, phenomena that combines nationalist ideals with socialist ideals as a matter of social change for the re-organization and progress of a society. It is a synthesis of the ideas of social reform, centralization, egalitarianism, Collectivism, nationalism and in the Austrian and German forms extreme ethnic nationalism. It is also called Fascism. It takes several different forms. It is basically derived from forces and concepts realized in the French Revolution. Furthermore, it was developed spontaneously in diverse areas of people wanted socialism without class warfare and without the internationalist aspect which is marxist socialism and who wanted to be nationalists at the same time. As in the words of Sir Oswald Mosley, "If you love our country you are national, and if you love our people you are a socialist". It became a powerful idea.

There is no single founder or birthplace of this idea. There is no set of doctrines that are common to all as opposed to Marxism that was doctrinaire and had a single "founder". This movement was arrived at by a dialectic in each of its particular circumstances and watered by neighboring developments, each influencing the other.

This ideology was to have dangerous, explosive and dominating effect on history of the world in the 20th century and is one of the causes of WWII and millions of lives lost. It was responsible for the horrors of the Holocaust.


Contents

[edit] General History

Nationalism and socialism as a political force was born in France and born in one man Jean Jacques Rousseau. As the main motivator of the French Revolution, Rousseau is known as the "father" of modern political nationalism. With the revival of classicism, Rousseau wished to restore the exclusive togetherness of the Greek city-state founded upon his volonté générale. (6) It was the French republican army that spread the "new nationalism abroad and stirred other peoples, or at lest their educated classes, into a mood receptive to it." In the decades after the French Revolution, nationalism was seen as a revolutionary device. Not only is Rousseau the founder of political nationalism but he was an antecessor to Socialism.

"Many writers have considered Socialism to be essentially French in its origin dating from the Encyclopedists, notably Rousseau, in whose works we do find some glimmerings of Socialist philosophy." (7)

Even though modern socialism is essentially international, it is not anti-nationalist. In a debate with Domela Nieuwenhuis, the Dutch Anarchist leader, August Bebel, who opposed Bismarck's policies of irredentism, "declared that in case of an attack upon Germany by Russia, for example, the Social Democracy would rally all its forces to the defense of the Fatherland." (8)

Rocked by turmoil ever since the Revolution, France was then besieged by a more dangerous force called, at the time "revolutionary" socialism or "communism" for short. It preached class warfare and death to its enemies. This new form scarred everyone and they united behind one man. Resistance to this new pattern of revolution was given by Louis Napoleon. His answer was to combine a dictatorship, organized on a popular basis, with a program of social reform. He was to unite the socialist instinct and the deepest republicanism as "the Revolution incarnate" as Proudhon says. (9)

Nazi writers in Germany saw in Napoleon a harbinger of national socialism. The Nazi writer Franz Kemper wrote in the introduction of the republication of Konstantin Frantz's book, Masse oder Volk of 1852, that "The rise of power of Louis Napoleon is the only historical parallel to the National Socialist revolution of our day". Another Nazi writer, Michael Freund, wrote that Napoleon was the only real revolutionist in 1848. Still another German National Socialist, K. H. Bremer, realized that Napoleon found the real motivating force of revolution in the social question rather than the constitutional question of the republicans of 1848. "His great aim was to establish a political system based upon the unity of all classes and of all interests in France". (10). This was the answer to marxist socialism. Napoleon was the first to develop a national socialism.

The intellectual foundations for fascism can be found in Pierre-Joseph Proudhon. His thought can be described as inharmonious. He defended private property and the family against the revolutionary socialists. He wanted to develop a possession populaire against a propriètè aristocratique. He also attacked the violence of the communists and defended the middle class against the finance capital that destroyed the middle class through interest and the proletariat with their violent destruction. A capitalist for him was a financier. Proudhon did not want to abolish competition because it was the vital force that animated all society. He was the defender of the middle class. Proudhon opposed democracy (esp. parliamentarianism) as a "disguised aristocracy". He promoted the idea of war as means of human progress even though it had evil incorporated in it. Moreover, he advocated one party rule and the formation of "elites" to direct the reform of society. "It was he who first sounded the fascist note of a revolutionary repudiation of democracy and of socialism". (17)

Many Fascist and Nazi writers point and recognize that Proudhon is the intellectual forerunner of fascism. Willibald Schulze hailed his as the Wegweiser of Nazi Germany because he repudiated socialism, capitalism and democracy. Mr. Schulze saw that Proudhon, just like National Socialism defended private enterprise and at the same time opposed to profit and interest. K. H. Bremer asserted that Proudhon popularized anti-liberalism as a social idea and if Louis Napoleon listened to him that maybe his dictatorship would have succeeded. (18) The Frenchman, Èdouard Berth hailed Proudhon the "father of modern socialism". Berth adapted many ideas from Proudhon especially "the socialization of commerce and the State." Hubert Lagardelle hailed Proudhon as the founder of anarchosyndicalism which split from the Italian Socialist Party to form the Fascio rivoluzionario d'azione internazionalista, the forerunner of Mussolini's Fascist party. Georges Sorel who was to have the biggest influence on the development of fascism was a disciple of Proudhon. Both Berth and Sorel drew on Nietzsche and Proudhon because they proposed new structures for socialism. Sorel pointed to Proudhon as providing a "new spirit in socialism". Sorel thought to complete the work of Prouhon. (19)

In this milieu, a Frenchman, in 1898, Maurice Barrès was the first to coin the term "national socialism" while standing for the candidacy for Nancy.. (2) "The idea of national socialism quickly spread throughout Europe". (2) Charles Maurras stated that there was a "form of socialism which when stripped of its democratic and cosmopolitan accretions, would fit in with nationalism just as a well made-glove fits a beautiful hand." (14) Nietzche realized analogies between socialism and nationalism. He considered both "dominated by envy and laziness". (5) "Jules Monnerot in his Sociologie du communisme affirms that modern tyranny must always combine social (or socialistic) with national appeal." (5)

[edit] French National Socialism

In 1903, a former socialist, Pierre Biétry formed a National Socialist Party. A year later, it was succeeded by the "Fédération Nationale des Jaunes de France". It was called "Yellow" socialism as opposed to "Red" Socialism or revolutionary socialism, Marxism. This Yellow socialism was violently opposed to marxism. It tried to wrestle workers away from Red socialism. "The French movement played the role model for Swiss and German yellow organizations with which it was closely connected". (13)

In 1925, George Valois founded the first non-Italian fascist movement, Le Faisceau and he defined it as 'Nationalism + socialism = fascism'. (15) Pierre Andreu, a Georges Sorel disciple, published an article titled Fascisme 1913 in the French review Combat (Feb 1936), in which he remarked on the curious synthesis of syndicalists and nationalists.

[edit] Austrian-Hungarian National Socialism

Background The German synthesis of nationalism and socialism melded together in Czechoslovakia and Austria which were all included under the Habsburg Monarchy called the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Nationalism took on revolutionary character under the rule of the hated Habsburg Monarchy and its cosmopolitanism.
Czech
In 1896, a Czech party was the first to carry the phrase "National Socialism" in a political party name in European history. It was started when a faction under the leadership of Klovac, Stribrny and Franke seceded from the Social Democratic Czech Party. They called their party the Czech National Socialist Party.
Austria, Sudetenland
Rudolf Jung, in his book, traces the rise of Austrian (Pan-German) national socialism to the activities of Ferdinand Burschofsky and Ludwig Vogel. (1) Baron Galéra traces it to another person "a certain Franko Stein who in 1897 transferred a small paper, Der Hammer from Vienna to Egar. Stein belonged to a tiny organization called the Deutschnationaler Arbeiterbund.". Three members of the Mährisch-Trübauer Verbund—a co-ordinating organization (what the Germans call a "roof organization") of nationalistic worker's associations in Morovia, Hans Knirsch, Rudolf Jung, and Hans Krebs, went on to become members of the daugher—Nazi Party of Adolf Hitler. It was Rudolf Jung who carried DAP party material and books to Munich.

Ferdinand Burschofsky considered von Schönerer too bourgeois to be a leader of a workers movement. He was a leader in one of the German National Workers league. In April 1902, they held a party congress, a meeting of the "Organization of Nationalistic Labor" in Saaz. On November 15, 1903, a political party formed called the German Worker's Party (D.A.P.) had their secretariat stationed in the town of Aussig and could be considered probably the most important center of early German national socialism. (4) A year later in Trautenau, they produced a program which in part says:

"We are a liberty-loving nationalistic party that fights energetically against reactionary tendencies as well as feudal, clerical, or capitalistic priviledges and all alien influences."

In 1904, Hans Knirsch, who hailed from Moravia, wanted to change the party name to the German Social Workers party or the National Socialist German Workers party. It was rejected because they didn't want to be seen as copying the Czechs which their party had the adjective "National Socialist" in it. Finally, at a party congress in Vienna in May of l918, the DAP party changed its name to the Deutsche Nationalsozialistische Arbeiterpartei (D.N.S.A.P.). After the break up of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire, that national socialism was called Austrian National Socialism.

[edit] German National Socialism

"Josef Pfitzner, a Sudetenland German Nazi author, wrote that "the synthesis of the two great dynamic powers of the century, of the socialist and national idea, had been perfected in the German borderlands which thus were far ahead of their motherland." (11)

Dr. Gottfried Feder, first attracted Adolf Hitler to the DAP through his socialist message. In Feder's speech he heard "the essential premises for the formation of a new party." (13) Before Hitler left, Drexler made sure his visitor picked up his pamphlet My Political Awakening. "Hitler read Drexler's little work with interest, for the mechanic's awakening seemed to mirror his own. he was also intrigued by Drexler's national Socialist mixture of anti-capitalist and nationalistic motifs. The notion of winning over the workers for the nation was something that Hitler was also coming to see as imperative." (12)

In the coming decade, Hitler was to use this national socialist ideology and transform it into its most virulent form, Nazism which was to have terrible consequences.

[edit] Italian Fascism

National socialism of the Italian kind, which is called Fascism, developed along very different lines from the German form. It is a product of Heglian dialectic among Marxist and Socialist philosophers and intellectuals. Nationalism was seen as a way to combat democratic and rationalist decadence and unite the country in revolutionary fervor. Italian Fascism represented a synthesis of nationalism and Marxism stripped of its materialism and class warfare. (3)

In the Doctrine of Fascism, Frenchmen Georges Sorel, Charles Peguy, and Hubert Lagardelle were invoked as the sources of fascism. It also quotes from the Frenchman Joseph Renan who it says had "prefascist intuitions". Both Sorel and Peguy were influenced by the Frenchman Henri Bergson. Bergson rejected the scientism, mechanical evolution and materialism of Marxist ideology. Also, Bergson promoted an elan vital as an evolutionary process. Both of these elements of Bergson appear in fascism. Mussolini states that fascism negates the doctrine of scientific and Marxian socialism and the doctrine of historic materialism. Hubert Lagardelle, an authoritative syndicalist writer, was influenced by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, who is the inspirer of anarchosyndicalism.

[edit] Miscellania

  • The Czech encyclopedia Masarykuv Ottuv Naucny (Prague, l931, V, 47) features the heading "Národne Sociální Strana" (National Socialist Party).


[edit] References

  1. Liberty or Equality, Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, Christendom Press, Front Royal, VA, 1953.1993. pg 254.
  2. The Birth of Fascist Ideology, From Cultural Rebellion to Political Revolution, Zeev Sternhell, with Mario Sznajder and Maia Asheri, Princeton University Press, NJ, l994. pg 11. and "Fascist Ideology", Zeev Sternhell, Fascism, A Readers Guide, ed. by Walter Laqueur, University of California Press, Berkeley, CA, 1976, pg 326.
  3. The Birth of Fascist Ideology, Zeev Sternhell, pg. 6.
  4. Liberty or Equality, von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, pg 363.
  5. Leftism Revisited, von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, pg 391.
  6. "Nationalism", Hans Kohn, Dictionary of the History of Ideas, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1973.
  7. Elements of Socialism, A Textbook, John Spargo and George Louis Arner, The MacMillan Company, NY, l919. pg 275.
  8. Elements of Socialism, John Spargo, pg 202-203.
  9. Liberalism and the Challenge of Fascism, Social Forces in England and France (1815-1870), J. Salwyn Schapiro, McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., NY, 1949. pp 316-321.
  10. Liberalism and the Challenge of Fascism, J. Salwyn Schapiro, pp 328-329.
  11. Leftism Revisited, Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, Regernery Gateway, Washington, D.C., 1990. pg 149.
  12. Where Ghosts Walked, Munich's Road to the Third Reich, David Clay Large, W.W.Norton&Co., NY, l997. pg 130.
  13. Where Ghosts Walked, David Clay Large, pg 127.
  14. "Fascist Ideology", Zeev Sternhell, Fascism, A Readers Guide, pg 327.
  15. "Fascist Ideology", Zeev Sternhell, Fascism, A Readers Guide, pg 326
  16. "Fascist Ideology", Zeev Sternhell, Fascism, A Readers Guide, pg 321 quoted G. Valois, Le Fascisme (Paris 1927), pg 21.
  17. Liberalism and the Challenge of Fascism, J. Salwyn Schapiro, pg 366.
  18. Liberalism and the Challenge of Fascism, J. Salwyn Schapiro, pg 368.
  19. The Birth of Fascist Ideology, Zeev Sternhell, Princeton University Press, NJ, 1994. pp 101, 124, 43-44, 110.