On `national socialism'
I'm writing in response to the letter from Jim Miller
in the August 30, 1999, issue of the Militant. Jim
disagrees with the use of the term "national socialist" to
characterize the rhetoric of Patrick Buchanan, because
Buchanan "uses populist rhetoric but avoids specifically
`socialist' rhetoric."
I don't see much difference between Buchanan's rhetoric and that actually used by the Nazis. There were a few demands about nationalization of trusts, the confiscation of war profits, and "the abolition of incomes unearned by work" in the Nazi party's 1920 program. But the party was not built on this platform.
If you read Mein Kampf, you find a total and explicit rejection of class struggle and an expressed desire to win the working class to the "national community." If capitalists are attacked, it is for failing to see themselves as part of this national community.
In a private discussion with the supposedly left-wing Nazi Otto Strasser in 1930, Hitler explained his own idea of socialism: "I am a Socialist. I was once an ordinary working-man. The mass of the working classes want nothing but bread and games. They will never understand the meaning of an ideal. What we have to do is to select from a new master-class men who will not allow themselves to be guided by the morality of pity." Asked if he would nationalize the Krupp trust, he replied: "Of course I should leave it alone. Do you think me so crazy as to want to ruin Germany's great industry?" He continued: "I have never said that all industries should be socialised. On the contrary, I have maintained that we might socialise enterprises prejudicial to the interests of the nation. Our National Socialist state, like the Fascist state, will safeguard both employers' and workers' interests while reserving the right of arbitration in case of dispute." (See J. Noakes and G. Pridham, Nazism, Volume I [New York, Schocken Books, 1984], pages 66-67. In the 1936 labor code, the employer was called "leader" and workers "his retinue"; the retinue had no rights.)
National socialism is not a set of ideas, but the use of demagogy to mobilize the resentments of the plebeian (mostly petty-bourgeois and lumpen proletarian) masses against bourgeois democracy in order to crush the organizations of the working class.
Hitler's socialist "ideas" are derived from the various petty-bourgeois, anti-Semitic utopian socialisms of the nineteenth century: Proudhon's, Bakhunin's, and Duhring's, for example; a few original crank notions are added to the mix. The Nazi utopia is a "national community," where employers and workers would have separate roles to play but owed each other duties as fellow "Germans." This is not very different from the rhetoric Buchanan now uses as he attacks corporations who do not respect their supposed duties to "American" workers.
Tom ÓBrien
St. Paul, Minnesota
Right to view eclipse
I work at Electrium in Manchester, an engineering
factory producing fuse boxes and switchgears. On the day
of the solar eclipse, the bosses told us that they would
not allow us to go outside to watch it. We were told that
if we had wanted to see it we should have booked a day's
holiday.
Most of the workers in the part of the factory where I work had by this stage stopped to discuss what to do next. The managing director came into the building and as he entered, workers vented their anger by booing and banging anything close to hand till he left. The supervisor then told us that we could view the eclipse but would have to clock out. All of us did this for 11 minutes.
When we came back in we were told we would be docked half an hours pay. After protests by workers this was reduced to 15 minutes. Protests continued and there was some coverage on local radio and newspapers, and the bosses climbed down and announced that no pay would be docked.
This came during negotiations for a substantial pay rise and improvements to the company sick- pay scheme, and has boosted workers confidence to take part in this fight. The current offer from the bosses is for a 2 percent pay rise.
Bernadette Campbell
Manchester, England