Passy

The Devil is in the detail, which is sadly missing from you latest post.
Hitler did indeed smash the communists, persecute them and consign them to his concentration camps. Sadly for you the detail you've missed is that Hitlers socialism had a massive nationalist flavour while the communist movement and particularly the German Communist Party (KDP) was an instrument of Josef Stalin and was commonly acknowledged so. Hitlers persecution of the communists was limited to this party and was merely of a nationalistic flavour rather than an anti-communist crusade. Hitler persecuted them for their allegiance to foreigners ... namely Stalin.

The other major party of the time was the Social Democratic Party, the SDP. It was centrist in nature and had appeal across the social strata. Hitler banned this party and persecuted many of it's members ... not on idealogical grounds but because it merely represented opposition.

Hitler's Party grew out of socialist sympatherises and recruits. While highly nationalistic in nature it did draw it's support right across the political spectrum and it's socialist aspects were supported by many workers and lower classes... and thus assisted Hitler in his rise. Indeed without this aspect it is doubtful he'd have gained the level of support he garnered at it's peak. His brownshirts were mostly working people.

Now truely it cannot be denied Hitler was elected as leader of a party espousing National Socialist policy. That included socialist policy. I may indeed attempt to discover the National Socialist Party's manifesto's of the period from 1922 to 1933. I suspect they will endorse socialist dogma and ideas ... as policy.

Would someone like to comment on Hitler's *fascist* rule - opposed of course to the ideologies of socialism or communism that are argued in previous posts?

Fascist rule is different and some say neo-conservatism has fascist tendencies.

Interesting read so far.

Some of the posts here raise questions about what is socialism and seem to conclude it is state ownership.

The marxist tradition recognises, as Marx and Engels put it in the Communist Manifesto, that "the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery, and wield it for its own purposes."

The state is an instrument of class rule. Under capitalism the capitalist state is an instrument for the ruling class to control the working class and also sort out their own differences. It is the band of robber brothers and the executive committee of the bourgeoisie.

A working class revolution establishes its own State for the majority - workers - to suppress the bourgeoisie - a very small minority.

The Paris Commune and the Russian Revolution show the way for this workers' state. Democratically elected workers councils, with the right of immediate recall, pay at the average wage, the armed militia of the people (not a separate army or police, which are instruments of capitalism). And before anybody butts in with "look at Stalin", I can give a long dissertation on the failure of the Russian Revolution, but that is for another time and place. Essentially it involves the de-classing of the Russian working class during the Civil War and the failure of the revolution to spread to advanced industrialised countries (although it was a close run thing in some countries) to help Russia out of its backwardness. For that reason and others the rise of Stalin represents the defeat of the Russian Revolution and the real marxist tradition.

The fixation of taking over the capitalist state is common to stalinism and reformism (ie labor party thinking). It just means these groups do not have any thoughts about socialism as the democratic rule of the working class through its own institutions. This explains why every labor government in the world profoundly disappoints its supporter. In winning elections to the capitalist state they manage capitalism, ie they rule in the interests of capital.

Why not make concrete this discussion by returning to the original article?

Was Suharto a fascist?

Pass

You haven't responded to my post with any sort of logical argument.

You have merely responded with a leftist diatribe when confronted in your beliefs.

Now you want to change the topic.

Really I have better things to do than follow your trail once you start running from facts.

Keith

With all respect your posts about Hitler and socialism are illogical and ahistorical. I can'respond to that.

Hitler was a fascist. He was the battering ram for the ruling class to smash workers' organisations in Germany and restore profit rates.

There is nothing socialist in that.

The ALP has as one of its goals the domcratic socialisation of the means of production (or some such.) That doesn't make them socialist at all. One because they will never implement this, and two because state ownership is not socialism. The same with Hitler.

And so to my question perhaps? Was Suharto a fascist?

I ask because it relates to the topic of the article and also will help people think about what fascism is.