Class background of the Nazi Elite

[synthesis]

I was interested to see the degree to which historical fascism was actually composed of the petite bourgeoisie; Mussolini was probably the most famous fascist that came from a petit-bourgeois background, but I decided to work with the Nazis first because there's more information available, owing to the Nuremburg trials. I've had the research done for awhile, but it was actually this quote that got me to put it all together:


The working class is just as much responsible for conservatism and fascism in the 20th century than anyone else. You forget that fascism and Naziism were movements made up of the dispossessed working class.

This first section deals with prominent Nazis as individuals; at the end there's some extra material about the larger class composition of the Nazi Party. Some professions are more difficult to pin down in terms of their class position so I've called it like I see it, and I'd say the various teaching professions are probably the toughest call in that respect; sometimes there's not enough available information to pick either petit-bourgeois and bourgeois; I'm sure there will inevitably be important people I'm leaving out; and of course it's not as though the elite is a perfect microcosm for the broader appeal of fascism, so check out the material at the bottom. But I was still surprised by the overwhelming results of this little experiment. Here we go:



Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski - SS-Obergruppenführer - family had aristocratic roots but father was precarian
Ernst Wilhelm Bohle -head of Foreign Organization of NSDAP - petit-bourgeois (father was college teacher and engineer)
Martin Bormann - Private Secretary to Hitler - working class (father was postal office worker)
Alois Brunner - SS Officer and Assistant to Eichmann - peasantry
Karl Dönitz - Commander-in-Chief of German Navy, 1943-1945 - petit-bourgeois (father was engineer)
Adolf Eichmann - SS-Obersturmbannführer and major architect of Holocaust - bourgeois (father owned mining company)
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obersturmbannf%C3%BChrer)
Hermann Fegelein - General of Waffen-SS - petit-bourgeois (father ran equestrian school)
Hans Frank - Governor-General of Occupied Poland - petit-bourgeois (father was a lawyer, joined Nazi party as a lawyer)
Wilhelm Frick - Minister of the Interior, 1933-1943 - petit-bourgeois (father was a teacher)
Walther Funk - Reich Minister for Economic Affairs - petit-bourgeois/bourgeois (merchant family)
Joseph Goebbels - Propaganda Minister - working class or petit-bourgeois? (father was factory clerk)
Hermann Goering - founder of Gestapo, commander-in-chief of Luftwaffe until 1942 - bourgeois (father was Governor General of Namibia)
Reinhard Heydrich - "darkest figure of the Nazi elite" and "architect of the Holocaust" - petite-bourgeois (father was a composer and opera singer)
Heinrich Himmler - controlled Gestapo and created the Einsatzgruppen - petit-bourgeois (father was deputy principal of his grammar school)
Adolf Hitler - Boss Hogg - petit-bourgeois (Alois Hitler was a civil servant)
Rudolf Hoss - Commandant of Auschwitz - either petit-bourgeois or bourgeois, his father ran a tea and coffee business
Alfred Jodl - Chief of the Operations Staff of the Armed Forces High Command - petit-bourgeois
Ernst Kaltenbrunner - General of SS, highest ranking Nazi to be executed at Nuremberg - petit-bourgeois (followed in his father's footsteps as a lawyer)
Wilhelm Keitel - head of the Supreme Command of the Armed Forces and de facto War Minister - aristocracy
Wilhelm Keppler - financier of NSDAP - bourgeois (owned "photographic gelatin factory," chairman of I.G. Farben subsidiary)
Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach - ran Friedrich Krupp heavy industry conglomerate, indicted at Nuremberg - married into bourgeoisie
Hans Lammers - head of Cabinet in Hitler's absence - petit-bourgeois (lawyer, son of veterinarian)
Robert Ley - head of German Labor Front, committed suicide before Nuremberg sentencing - either petit-bourgeois or peasantry; father was "heavily indebted farmer"
Martin Luther - diplomat - either petit-bourgeois or bourgeois, ran a furniture removal/interior decorating business
Josef Mengele - "Angel of Death" - bourgeois (family owned farm machinery company)
Heinrich Müller - Chief of Gestapo and major architect of Holocaust - working class family
Konstantin von Neurath - Foreign Minister, 1932-1938 - aristocracy/bourgeois
Otto Ohlendorf - SS-Gruppenführer, head of the Inland-SD, head of Einsatzgrup D - aristocracy/bourgeoisie (family was wealthy farm/landowners)
Oswald Pohl - SS-Obergruppenführer - petit-bourgeois (father was blacksmith)
Joachim von Ribbentrop - Foreign Minister of Nazi Germany, 1938-1945 - petit-bourgeois, ran a small wine/champagne import business and father was a middle-ranking army officer
Ernst Röhm - co-founder of SA - petit-bourgeois (father was railway official)
Alfred Rosenburg - influential Nazi theoretician and Reich Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories - petit-bourgeois/bourgeois (wealthy merchant family)
Fritz Sauckel - Gauleiter of Thuringia and General Plenipotentiary for Labour Deployment, 1942-1945 - working class/petit-bourgeois (father was postman, mother was seamstress)
Baldur von Schirach - head of Hitler Youth, later Reich Governor of Vienna - petit-bourgeois (father was a theater director)
Georg Ritter von Schönerer - not NSDAP, but major and direct theoretical influence - bourgeois (railroad magnate)
Kurt von Schroeder - financier of NSDAP - finance aristocracy (banker)
Franz Xaver Schwarz - National Treasurer of NSDAP - petit-bourgeois (notary, father was a "master baker")
Arthur Seyss-Inquart - General Government of Occupied Poland and Reichskommissar in the Netherlands - petit-bourgeois (lawyer, father was a principal)
Albert Speer - Minister of Armaments and War Production - petit-bourgeois
Otto & Gregor Strasser - leaders of "left-wing" of NSDAP, killed in Night of Long Knives - petit-bourgeois (father was a judicial officer; Otto worked as a journalist while Gregor started as a pharmacist)
Julius Streicher - founder and publisher of Der Sturmer, a major Nazi propaganda organ - petit-bourgeois (both he and his father were elementary school teachers; he married a baker's daughter)
Ernst von Weizsäcker - State Secretary of Foreign Office - aristocratic/bourgeois
Horst Wessel - SA-Sturmführer and "posthumous hero of NSDAP" following death in 1930 - petit-bourgeois (father was Lutheran minister)
Christian Wirth - Policeman, SS Officer, leading architect of the Holocaust in Poland - petit-bourgeois (father was "master cooper")
Karl Wolff - SS Obergruppenführer and General of Waffen-SS: petit-bourgeois (father was a district court judge)

Feel free to dispute my analysis here, or to suggest additions if I've left anyone out or you think I'm cherry-picking. I plan on filling out the list soon. Also, regardless of their class background, a sizable majority of them served in World War I and then joined the Freikorps.

There seem to be more sources suggesting that the Nazis didn't really get their foothold in the working class, only gaining it after they came to dominate the German government.


By 1928, the NSDAP was popular with farmers, small business owners, public servants and others in the middle-class who felt ignored or betrayed by the Weimar government. The Nazis failed to muster much support in industrial and working class areas, such as Berlin, Hamburg and the Ruhr, where support for the SPD and KPD remained strong. (source (http://alphahistory.com/weimargermany/rise-of-the-nsdap/))
Voters in large urban centres were less susceptible to Nazi electoral propaganda. In July 1932, the NSDAP's support in the Grosstadte (over 100,000 inhabitants) was 10 per cent lower than the national average. Though there had been a significant increase in support among German workers between 1930 and 1932, this was less marked in the larger cities; and nearly half the working-class newcomers to the party ranks between 1925 and 1932 came from villages of under 5,000 inhabitants. And proportionally few of the working-class storm-troopers of the SA came from the big cities.

In part this pattern reflects the point that Hitler and his followers were able to build support in small provincial towns and rural areas more effectively than in the large cities precisely because political mobilisation was less developed in the provinces and the countryside. SPD (Social Democrat) and KPD (Communist) support had been and was still concentrated in the big cities, and the electoral drive of the NSDAP encountered powerful traditions and loyalties there. This urban/rural divide was reinforced by another factor: the Nazis were relatively unsuccessful in gaining the electoral support of the unemployed, who were also concentrated in Germany's largest cities.

For many years the Nazi movement was seen as a political response of the German Mittelstand (lower middle class) of small businessmen, independent artisans, small shopkeepers and the self-employed, to the threats coming from big business and large retail stores, from the trade unions, the SPD and the KPD, and from increased government interference and taxes to pay for Weimar's burgeoning welfare state. In many respects it was such a response -- in its combination of anti-socialist and anti-big business rhetoric, and in its social support. The lower middle class of Germany's Protestant towns did constitute the hard-core of Nazi support and were over-represented in the membership of the NSDAP. (source (http://www.johndclare.net/Weimar6_Geary.htm))
White-collar workers living in large industrial towns and from manual working-class backgrounds were relatively immune to the NSDAP's appeals and often supported the SPD, whereas those living in middle-class districts or small provincial towns, as well as those whose origins were not in the manual working class, were more likely to be Nazi supporters. (source (http://books.google.com/books?id=q3kGSciS6WsC&pg=PA25&lpg=PA25#v=onepage&q&f=false))
Contrary to Joseph Goebbels's assertion in early 1933 that the Machtergreifung signified "a revolution of a workers' movement," empirical historical inquiry has established that by 1933 the NSDAP drew its electoral support overwhelmingly from the smalltown and rural Protestant Mittelstand, comprising men and women in roughly equal numbers, in northern, central, and eastern Germany. Although by 1930-31 the lower Hittelstand, particularly of the "old" or traditional type, predominated among the party's voters and members, the upper Hittelstand were beginning to flock into the ranks in ever-increasing numbers in 1932, thus making the NSDAP more of a catch-all movement of middle-class protest, a movement of bourgeois integration. Two identifiable groups were manifestly immune to Nazi blandishments: the Catholics, who continued to vote solidly for the confessional Center Party and Bavarian People's party, and the organized industrial working class, who steadfastly maintained their allegiance to the Social Democratic (SPD) and Communist (KPD) parties. Changes in voting patterns among the organized workers usually involved a switch by unemployed, unskilled or semiskilled urban voters from the SPD to the more radical KPD.

Despite some success among workers in certain urban and industrial areas in Westphalia, the Rhineland-Ruhr, Saxony, Thuringia, the Pfalz, and ßerlin-Brandenburg, the NSDAP remained a party of middle-class interests, and in terms of its membership, industrial workers were also significantly underrepresented, especially in the leadership cadres. In both proportionate and absolute terms, the working-class element in the NSDAP's constituency from 1925 to 1933 was small, and its claims to be a genuine popular movement had, therefore, no basis in reality. This is the scenario against which any discussion of the party's relationship to the German proletariat must take place. This chapter analyzes this relationship with a view to obtaining a clear perspective on the principal reasons for the NSDAP's failure to win much support among this particular group in Weimar society. (This source (http://jch.sagepub.com/content/15/3/493.full.pdf) goes on about this at length.)Most of the material I can readily find that suggests otherwise is in academic journals I can't fully access, such as this (http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/260415?uid=3739856&uid=2&uid=4&uid=3739256&sid=21102729382121). If anyone has JSTOR access and can pluck a few sentences out of any of these articles (https://scholar.google.com/scholar?oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&lr&q=related:xJPq2hO15XfZiM:scholar.google.com/) for me in the interest of impartiality, it would be much appreciated.

I'm looking forward to any additions, rebuttals or questions, although I don't plan on thinking about this at all for at least 12 hours.

[Raquin]

Personally I object to the way you label wage-workers like engineers, teachers, most lawyers and civil servants as petite-bourgeois. Petite-bourgeoisie elements as basically nothing more than small scale capitalists, lawyers that own their practices, truck drivers that own their won trucks, farmers that own their farms, small show owners and so on. Also, is a Lutheran minister really petit-bourgeois? The Clergy is a class too y'know.

[Hrafn]

I disagree with your classification of petit-bourgeois.

[A.J.]

Two identifiable groups were manifestly immune to Nazi blandishments: the Catholics.... and the organized industrial working class....

The very same "two identifiable groups" the Scottish National party has routinely failed to garner much support from.

"History repeats itself; first time as tragedy, second time as farce" :ohmy:

[synthesis]

I disagree with your classification of petit-bourgeois.

Which ones do you specifically disagree with? I'd say around 90% of the ones I classified as such were indisputably petit-bourgeois (e.g. self-employed artisans, lawyers and of course owners of small businesses) around the turn of the 20th century. It's not something I throw around lightly - I spent a decent amount of time searching for additional biographical material to ensure that they really did fit the definition of petit-bourgeois in the system of Marxist class analysis.

Or do you just not like the association of the petite-bourgeoisie with fascism? Because that's not exactly a new concept. The goal was mainly to tackle the argument (surprisingly common among people who promote class collaboration with the petite-bourgeoisie) that fascism was rooted in the urban proletariat beyond the fantasies of early fascist theoreticians and propagandists.

[erupt]

Heinrich Himmler - controlled Gestapo and created the Einsatzgruppen - petit-bourgeois (father was deputy principal of his grammar school)

In my opinion, Himmler, the cowardly bastard he was, was from the working class; he was a chicken farmer.

Also, just because the individual's parents were of petit-bourgeois distinction does not necessarily mean that they are as well; Hitler could even be classified as lumpenproletariat (to his disgust) because he was a rambling artist in Vienna for a few years.

[synthesis]

Personally I object to the way you label wage-workers like engineers, teachers, most lawyers and civil servants as petite-bourgeois. Petite-bourgeoisie elements as basically nothing more than small scale capitalists, lawyers that own their practices, truck drivers that own their won trucks, farmers that own their farms, small show owners and so on. Also, is a Lutheran minister really petit-bourgeois? The Clergy is a class too y'know.

First, I think you have too narrow a view of the petite bourgeoisie; for example, a self-employed composer (Heydrich's dad) is certainly petit-bourgeois, but it doesn't have to be based on owning physical capital. Beyond just "small-scale capitalists," the petite bourgeoisie also necessarily includes those who are not exploited for their labor but who also do not exploit the labor of others to the extent that they no longer need to do productive work to get by.

I would also argue that you're projecting modern conceptions of those professions onto how they actually operated back then - again, I didn't just slap the "petit-bourgeois" sticker on anyone without doing any research into their individual family story, although I'm certainly open to historical corrections on specific entries - but I do admit that Horst Wessel was a bit of a toss-up for me.

When it comes to religion as commodity, I find that once you get out of the feudal mode of production, it's equally accurate to view, say, the Pope as "bourgeois" and Protestant ministers - Protestantism being relatively decentralized - as "petit-bourgeois," in the sense of being self-employed. But there were certainly still remnants of the feudal mode at that point, which is why I agree that it's not as clear-cut as some of the others.

[synthesis]

Also, just because the individual's parents were of petit-bourgeois distinction does not necessarily mean that they are as well; Hitler could even be classified as lumpenproletariat (to his disgust) because he was a rambling artist in Vienna for a few years.

Sure, and it can go the other way, too; someone born into a petit-bourgeois family can get lucky and matriculate into the haute bourgeoisie. But it doesn't change their class background; hence the title of the thread.

[Thirsty Crow]

First, I think you have too narrow a view of the petite bourgeoisie; for example, a self-employed composer (Heydrich's dad) is certainly petit-bourgeois, but it doesn't have to be based on owning physical capital. Beyond just "small-scale capitalists," the petite bourgeoisie also necessarily includes those who are not exploited for their labor but who also do not exploit the labor of others to the extent that they no longer need to do productive work to get by.

Synth, I too disagree with your view.
The issue with not engaging in the relationship of capital and wage labor is, in my opinion, crucial in thinking about that class since this relationship which is manifest in a very concrete way is crucial to the development of class struggle (these are its basic actors).

I also disagree with the idea that non-productive work should be a criterion here (non-productive in the sense of producing surplus value). For instance, a hiring agency which sends cleaners to bourgeois homes certainly doesn't hire wage labor which produces surplus value. This means that the issue of productive work is not relevant here, and I honestly fail to see how it is relevant in cases of non-productive work done by the self-employed.

[synthesis]

Synth, I too disagree with your view.
The issue with not engaging in the relationship of capital and wage labor is, in my opinion, crucial in thinking about that class since this relationship which is manifest in a very concrete way is crucial to the development of class struggle (these are its basic actors).

I mean, that's fair, but you don't think it's just as significant whether one's labor is being exploited or not?


I also disagree with the idea that non-productive work should be a criterion here (non-productive in the sense of producing surplus value). For instance, a hiring agency which sends cleaners to bourgeois homes certainly doesn't hire wage labor which produces surplus value. This means that the issue of productive work is not relevant here, and I honestly fail to see how it is relevant in cases of non-productive work done by the self-employed.

I guess I have a broader definition of "productive work" and "surplus value." It sounds like you don't think service workers produce surplus value; am I wrong?

[Thirsty Crow]

I mean, that's fair, but you don't think it's just as significant whether one's labor is being exploited or not?Yes, it is significant, but I still think that this concrete relationship should analytically take precedence. But of course, the fact that one's labor isn't exploited, as a social situation, can account for differences in outlook. It's surely a different class position, but also different from that of the bourgeoisie or petite bourgeoisie.


I guess I have a broader definition of "productive work" and "surplus value." It sounds like you don't think service workers produce surplus value; am I wrong?
I mentioned hiring agencies for personal services like cleaning and housework for precisely this reason, since service labor can either be productive or non-productive (reproductive in case of hired housework) - contrast the former with the labor of food preparation in restaurants for instance.

Honestly, I think your view on the petite bourgeoisie stems from the idea of significant class polarization in society, but the issue is that the two camps represent two major classes in capitalist society - with a whole lot of in-between. For instance, there is the issue of the managerial and professional strata that command power of hire-and-fire. Do these strata represent a layer, probably lowest, of the ruling class, or the uppermost layer of the working class? What methodological criteria should come into play here?

[Red_Banner]

Which ones do you specifically disagree with? I'd say around 90% of the ones I classified as such were indisputably petit-bourgeois (e.g. self-employed artisans, lawyers and of course owners of small businesses) around the turn of the 20th century. It's not something I throw around lightly - I spent a decent amount of time searchingy for additional biographical material to ensure that they really did fit the definition of petit-bourgeois in the system of Marxist class analysis.

Or do you just not like the association of the petite-bourgeoisie with fascism? Because that's not exactly a new concept. The goal was mainly to tackle the argument (surprisingly common among people who promote class collaboration with the petite-bourgeoisie) that fascism was rooted in the urban proletariat beyond the fantasies of early fascist theoreticians and propagandists.


How are engineers and lawyers petite-bourgois?

[synthesis]

I mentioned hiring agencies for personal services like cleaning and housework for precisely this reason, since service labor can either be productive or non-productive (reproductive in case of hired housework) - contrast the former with the labor of food preparation in restaurants for instance.

I guess I'm not sure why you think hired housework doesn't produce surplus value if they are being paid a wage. What am I missing here?


Honestly, I think your view on the petite bourgeoisie stems from the idea of significant class polarization in society, but the issue is that the two camps represent two major classes in capitalist society - with a whole lot of in-between. For instance, there is the issue of the managerial and professional strata that command power of hire-and-fire. Do these strata represent a layer, probably lowest, of the ruling class, or the uppermost layer of the working class? What methodological criteria should come into play here?

Would you consider it outlandish to view cops as essentially petit-bourgeois, at the very least in their relative class position? Why or why not?

This (http://www.mltranslations.org/us/rpo/classes/classes3.htm) is a Marxist-Leninist source, but I think it puts forward some compelling arguments.

[synthesis]

How are engineers and lawyers petite-bourgois?

Engineers, as with teachers, should be taken on a case-by-case basis; again, I think there's a misunderstanding here based on how those occupations are seen today versus how they existed 120 years ago.

As for lawyers, they're either petit-bourgeois or bourgeois, as long as paralegal workers aren't included in the definition - they're generally not, and even if you decide that's just semantics, I did enough research for the individual situations in the OP to be confident labeling them as such.

[Fakeblock]

I don't see how the class position of a small proprietor changes when he hires a few employees and his class interests don't really change. Even those that might not be petit-bourgeois on the list tend to fall in line with other non-proletarian middle class elements such as the intelligentsia.

However, I think it's more useful to look at the social composition of the body of a movement rather than the elite (and I see you've devoted a fair bit of your post to this as well). In capitalism the elite almost always comes from more priviledged and wealthier backgrounds. Looking at the base to which they appeal as well as their ideology itself gives more insight into the class character of a movement imo.

[argeiphontes]

Personally I object to the way you label wage-workers like engineers, teachers, most lawyers and civil servants as petite-bourgeois.

It might be better to classify these kinds of people as a separate "coordinator class," like Chomsky talks about. It could be argued that they "own" some capital in the form of their education, but this only allows a somewhat privileged position vis-a-vis capital. They are exploited for their surplus labor, and their natural interests lie with the working class, but for ideological reasons they can side with the bourgeoisie.

I don't think it's fair to write off the revolutionary potential of the coordinator class, because of their natural interests. Given the right ideology, some teachers (http://chomsky.info/index.htm), economists (http://rdwolff.com/), engineers (http://www.isthmuseng.com/company/worker-owned-cooperative/), and computer people (yours truly) will certainly come over to our side.

edit: Their coordination and reproduction functions could make them important allies.

[tachosomoza]

I'd say that certain members of the coordinator/professional class would be more receptive due to their unique position and education. A corporate lawyer or a multimillionaire plastic surgeon, probably not, but a doctor that works for a free clinic or a legal professional that works within proletarian communities and recognizes the inherent fuckery of the bourgeois legal system because he sees it every day, most certainly.

[Red_Banner]

Engineers, as with teachers, should be taken on a case-by-case basis; again, I think there's a misunderstanding here based on how those occupations are seen today versus how they existed 120 years ago.

As for lawyers, they're either petit-bourgeois or bourgeois, as long as paralegal workers aren't included in the definition - they're generally not, and even if you decide that's just semantics, I did enough research for the individual situations in the OP to be confident labeling them as such.


Engineers fall into the intelligentsia.

[Creative Destruction]

You said you wrote this rebuttal in response to what I said here:


The working class is just as much responsible for conservatism and fascism in the 20th century. The fascist movements were aimed at and recruited and was propagated by large sections of the German and Italian working class. There would have been no other way for them to have risen to the heights that they did. The working class is just as much responsible for that as it is with the socialist Spanish uprisings and the resistance to the Nazis.

Yet, I don't see a rebuttal in the OP. I never said that there were working class people in the elite ranks of the Nazis, nor did I say that the entire (or even most) of the working class were involved with the Nazis or the fascists. The context of what I said is important, too: it was in response to baronci who said:


Is that why the Spanish communes were the most capable force against the fascists in Spain? What about when Mussolini instituted massive police domination of working class cities in Italy where the workers were refusing to go along with the Fascists demands? I guess they were just unconsciously promoting fascism.

He (and you apparently as well) seem intent on mischaracterizing what I had said.

Aside from all of that, the quotes you posted don't contradict what I said. It doesn't matter if it was the small-town or big-city working class; there was a section of the working class that was recruited by the Nazis, who were obviously an integral base. (40% of the initial membership of the party were working class):


More contentious has been the relationship between workers and the Nazi Party. Recent research has revised the impression of working-class immunity to Nazism: around 55 per cent of SA stormtroopers came from working-class backgrounds and the Nazis made substantial gains from working-class communities in parts of Saxony, especially around Chemnitz. Around 40 per cent of members of the Party seem to have been of working-class origins; similarly 40 per cent of the Nazi vote came from workers and one worker in every four voted for Hitler in July 1932.

Again, that's not to say (as I never did) that the entire working class were responsible for the rise of Nazism, but there was obviously a large and decisive amount of working class membership in the party, which helped it to where it went. I agree with the assessment in a following paragraph:


There is little correlation between the percentage of workers in a community and the level of support for the NSDAP, though there is a slight positive correlation between the percentage of employed workers and the size of the Nazi vote. In 1930 some 3 per cent of Nazi votes came from former KPD and 14 per cent from former SPD voters (July 1932, 2 per cent and 10 per cent respectively); and the number of workers voting for the National Socialists in the first Reichstag elections of 1932 was greater than the number of workers voting for the SPD or the KPD individually (though not than the number voting for SPD and KPD combined).

There can be no doubt that the NSDAP recruited across a broad social spectrum. However, its support was not random. We have already noted the over-representation of Protestants, rural areas and small provincial towns, as well as of the Mittelstand, in Nazi support and there was a similar structure to the movement's working-class constituency. The working class, however, was under-represented in the Nazi ranks when compared to the German population as a whole.

http://www.johndclare.net/Weimar6_Geary.htm

That goes to the larger argument I was making in the other thread: the working class is not a homogeneous political entity, whether or not we (individual working class socialists) believe that socialism is in our best interest. That should be pretty damn uncontroversial, with a cursory reading of historical political affairs and even with current events. There are not-so-insignificant sections of it that are, in effect, responsible for the reactionary and conservative response in the 20th century, just as there is a huge section of the working class that is responsible for the revolutionary activity of the 20th century. Working class involvement in these right-wing, conservative movements is more apparent with the Spanish Falangists, Italian fascists and, especially with the Argentine Peronists, who even enjoyed union support.

As a different aside:


Two identifiable groups were manifestly immune to Nazi blandishments: the Catholics, who continued to vote solidly for the confessional Center Party and Bavarian People's party

I don't know how this author is using the word "blandishment" in relation to the Catholics being immune to the Nazis for it, but this is flatly wrong. It's true that the Catholics stayed within their parties, but the Nazis convinced them to, pretty much, vote with the NDSP and hand power over to Hitler. Without the collaboration of the Catholics, who helped the Nazis pass the Enabling Act, the Nazi Party could have just been a few footnote in the history books.

[Thirsty Crow]

It could be argued that they "own" some capital in the form of their education, but this only allows a somewhat privileged position vis-a-vis capital.
Watch out, that's a dangerous rode you're treading, leading to the destination of the famous inventions of social and/or cultural capital.

Which is bollocks either way, and only masks what capital is exactly.

Apart from that, how could an owner of capital be in a privileged position vis-a-vis (implying confrontation with, or a kind of an antagonistic relationship)...capital?

[synthesis]

Engineers fall into the intelligentsia.

The "intelligentsia" is a sociological category, not a Marxist class.


Yet, I don't see a rebuttal in the OP. I never said that there were working class people in the elite ranks of the Nazis, nor did I say that the entire (or even most) of the working class were involved with the Nazis or the fascists.

Yup, what you said was:


You forget that fascism and Naziism were movements made up of the dispossessed working class.

And I don't really have any interest in disproving this ridiculous misconception any more than I already have. You can flail in the wind about it if you want.

[Creative Destruction]

And I don't really have any interest in disproving this ridiculous misconception any more than I already have. You can flail in the wind about it if you want.

You haven't disproved shit. What I said was correct. They were made up of the dispossessed working class. That doesn't mean the entire working class supported the movements or that the movements didn't include other classes. I'm sorry, but those are the facts, as I cited. Nazi membership was 40% working class initially.

[Red_Banner]

The "intelligentsia" is a sociological category, not a Marxist class.



Yup, what you said was:



And I don't really have any interest in disproving this ridiculous misconception any more than I already have. You can flail in the wind about it if you want.

Tell that to the East Germans and North Koreans who instituted them into their ideologies.

Not every socialist or communist idea originates from Marx.

[synthesis]

Nazi membership was 40% working class initially.

What is your source for this 40% claim? It's contradicted by literally everything else I've read on the subject:


Even a writer like Bracher (a bourgeois scholar, but one who accepts that the NSDAP was a middle class party) notes that the working class membership of the NSDAP rose from 20% in 1930 to 32% in 1934. Even if we accede to his argument that, as the working class constituted 46% of the population, it was severely ‘under represented’ in the NSDAP, we still have an uncomfortably large number of proletarians to explain away. (source (http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/isj2/1978/no2-002/sparks.html))

[Creative Destruction]

What is your source for this 40% claim? It's contradicted by literally everything else I've read on the subject:

I gave you the the link to the paper. It was directly quoted in my reply to you. It was written by Dick Geary, a Marxist historian (published in History Today) who critically looked at the numbers and came to the same (right) conclusion about how the Nazi Party was antagonistic to the working class.

Let's leave that aside for a second, though. Based on what's been cited in this thread, 20% to 40% of the membership of the Nazi party was working class. 20% is still a pretty damn significant base of support, especially for a party that was just barely clawing its way through the Reichstag for a number of years. That's not to mention that the party probably wouldn't have gotten to where they were without the SA and its particular brand of intimidation and thuggery -- the SA drew a lot of bodies from the working class.

Eta. And re-reading that paragraph, they don't rebut a fairly significant amount of the Nazi membership was working class (over a third according to that article.) So, no, it doesn't contradict anything, especially considering, aside from that, Geary's article was written in 1993, where he pointed out that new research had led to a revision of the numbers.

[synthesis]

Okay, I admit I didn't really read that post because it seemed like you were trying to pretend like you never said that "fascism and Nazism were movements made up of the dispossessed working class" in defense of the petite-bourgeoisie, which most Marxist historians acknowledge was the base of the NSDAP.

Regardless of the percentages, here's a quote from two paragraphs later in literally the exact same source, which you'll notice I also quoted in the OP:


The working class, however, was under-represented in the Nazi ranks when compared to the German population as a whole.

[Creative Destruction]

Okay, I admit I didn't really read that post because it seemed like you were trying to pretend like you never said that "fascism and Nazism were movements made up of the dispossessed working class" in defense of the petite-bourgeoisie, which most Marxist historians acknowledge was the base of the NSDAP.

Regardless of the percentages, here's a quote from two paragraphs later in literally the exact same source, which you'll notice I also quoted in the OP:

I wasn't writing anything in defense of the petit-bourgeoisie. And I stand by what I said. I still do. I never said that anything in contradiction to what Marxist historians say was the base of the Nazi Party. It's undeniable that it was made up primarily of and in the interests of the middle class. That does not stand in contradiction to the fact that a good part of the Nazi Party was made up of the working class.

I'll even concede that the German working class, in general, were not hot on Nazism. Of course not. Once the Night of Long Knives happened, that just made it all the clearer; after the Nazis had pretty much destroyed their paramilitary movement because the mainly working class make-up of the SA was all but demanding that Hitler make the party more socialist.

That's the thing, though: me saying all of that still does not contradict what I've said before. I never made the claim that most or a majority of the working class helped the Nazis. So, you're taking whacks at strawmen here. If I need to distill my argument again, here it is:

A.) The working class is not a homogenous group with a uniform political opinion. Wildly to the contrary, these things are often influenced by the geography, race, personal experience and background, and maybe other factors including family.

B.) In as much as the working class has been on the frontlines of revolutionary activity in the 20th century, significant parts of the working class were also on the frontlines of reactionary and conservative politics, including fascism, Nazism and other related authoritarian/totalitarian movements.

As an example of that, I pointed out that a significant base of support for the Nazis was the working class, both in the rank-and-file membership as well as in the Strasserite stormtrooper thugs in the SA. The working class in Germany, in general, was less amiable toward Nazism. In other countries, working class support for fascism was more obvious; including large sections and support groups for the Falangists in Spain, Mussolini's Blackshirts in Italy and, generally, the Peronists in Argentina (which, as I noted before, enjoyed quite a bit of support from the unions.)

[synthesis]

I never made the claim that most or a majority of the working class helped the Nazis. So, you're taking whacks at strawmen here. If I need to distill my argument again

You don't need to distill your argument again, because that's not the claim I was addressing. The claim I was addressing, that you seem to be pretending you didn't say, or at least that you didn't make it in the context that you made it, was the one that "fascism and Nazism were movements made up of the dispossessed working class." Even your own sources acknowledge that the working class was underrepresented in the NSDAP. How do you not understand the significance of this?

I'll just put the original posts here, for context, and let people decide for themselves what you were actually saying:


and lol @ the people saying that the petit-bourgeoisie follows along with the communist revolution. You should all know that the petit-bourgeoisie is the most reactionary of the classes; the class responsible for conservativism and fascism in the 20th century and the present day. They cannot be communist, it's entirely against their class interests.


You need to stop with the revisionist history. The working class is just as much responsible for conservatism and fascism in the 20th century than anyone else. You forget that fascism and Naziism were movements made up of the dispossessed working class. The American working class is one of the most reactionary and conservative in the world.

[Geiseric]

The rise in working class Nazi membership was very likely due to the exodus of members from the then illegal SPD and KPD, people who were in the Red Fighters and the Reichsbanner who may of joined the SA. Overall the majority of Nazi leaders were petit bourgeois. The SA which had most of the "leftist" working class nazis was also purged and mostly replaced by the SS, which was entirely petit bourgeois and army veterans.

[Creative Destruction]

You don't need to distill your argument again, because that's not the claim I was addressing. The claim I was addressing, that you seem to be pretending you didn't say, or at least that you didn't make it in the context that you made it, was the one that "fascism and Nazism were movements made up of the dispossessed working class." Even your own sources acknowledge that the working class was underrepresented in the NSDAP. How do you not understand the significance of this?

I'll just put the original posts here, for context, and let people decide for themselves what you were actually saying:

I know the context of what the post was made in. I still stand by it. Nothing in this thread contradicts that statement, even with the added context. I'll say it again: Fascism and Nazism were movements made up of the dispossessed working class. That they were underrepresented, as a class in general, in the Nazi Party does not contradict a goddamn thing that I've said. It's not an implication that most of the working class made up the Nazis and fascists.

[synthesis]

It's not an implication that most of the working class made up the Nazis and fascists.

Why do you keep repeating this as though anyone has characterized your arguments as such?

[Geiseric]

They were movements of the dispossessed petit bourgeois, not the working class who never "possessed," anything in the first place. They were never voted in by a fair election, and it was mostly due to the sectarian political disasters of the KPD that they were able to win power in the first place.

[Creative Destruction]

Why do you keep repeating this as though anyone has characterized your arguments as such?

That's the only reason this would be such an issue. Otherwise, you really have no argument. So if that's not the issue, what the fuck is your point, already?

[synthesis]

That's the only reason this would be such an issue. Otherwise, you really have no argument. So if that's not the issue, what the fuck is your point, already?

Okay, let's start over.


You seem to think that my problem is that you think that most of the German working class supported fascism. That's not the problem and I know that's not what you think.
The problem is that someone said that the petite-bourgeoisie is "the class responsible for conservatism and fascism in the 20th century and the present day"
And you replied: "The working class is just as much responsible for conservatism and fascism in the 20th century than anyone else. You forget that fascism and Naziism were movements made up of the dispossessed working class. The American working class is one of the most reactionary and conservative in the world."
The argument that the working class is "just as much responsible for fascism" as the petite-bourgeoisie is patently ridiculous given information in the sources that you've provided in this very thread.
It also just struck me as very contemptuous of the working class, and given the fact that at the same time you were promoting the revolutionary potential of the petite-bourgeoisie as a class, I thought it was worth responding to.

Hopefully that clears things up.

[Creative Destruction]

The argument that the working class is "just as much responsible for fascism" as the petite-bourgeoisie is patently ridiculous given information in the sources that you've provided in this very thread.

Given the popularity of conservatism and fascism within many working class constituencies, I do think that is true. Again, I conceded that the German working class itself was probably on-the-whole hostile to Nazism (even though the working class members that did join were instrumental in its rise.) I think if you look at the working class support for other conservative movements around the world, it becomes more apparent. Again, Italy, Spain, USA, Argentina and many of the conservative movements in South America.


It also just struck me as very contemptuous of the working class, and the fact that at the same time that you were promoting the revolutionary potential of the petite-bourgeoisie as a class, I thought it was worth responding to.

I never defended the "revolutionary potential" of the petit-bourgeoisie as a "class." I was saying that being hostile toward an individual -- particularly if they say they are sympathetic to socialism -- because of their class status is ridiculous and wrong-headed. I don't recall ever claiming or defending the entire class as having revolutionary potential. I guess I didn't exhibit enough hatred or hostility toward the petit-bourgeoisie to be a True Revolutionary. Should that be the case, I'm going to steal and retool a phrase from Fred Hampton: I don't struggle out of a hatred for the petit-bourgeoisie or the bourgeoisie, but out of love of the working class.

[synthesis]

(even though the working class members that did join were instrumental in its rise.)

Are you referring to the SA here?

[Creative Destruction]

Are you referring to the SA here?

I'm talking about the SA, the 20% - 40% of Nazi membership that was reportedly working class, the "one in four" of the working class that voted for the Nazis in the 30s (according to my link.) Those are significant numbers, again, considering the party was scraping by for quite a number of years until the Nazis got over 30% of the Reichstag in the early 30s. Had those sections of the working class joined up with the SPD or the KPD instead, the Nazis probably wouldn't have been in a position to get anywhere, and they would've been crank trouble-makers.

Of course, it wasn't just the working class members who joined the Nazis. Or the business interests. Contra to one of your OP's sources, that the Catholic Centre Party wasn't down with the Nazis, Hitler wouldn't have been able to have passed his Enabling Law without their support. It was a perfect shitstorm, as it were, but significant -- significant enough -- amounts of working class Germans made it possible, too.

[Creative Destruction]

not the working class who never "possessed," anything in the first place.

This is actually a good point and one that I am willing to concede, regarding my phrase. I was under the impression, at first, that the working class sections that supported the Nazis were mainly unemployed, when that is not the case, according to the papers cited in this thread. It turns out that most of the working class who did support and join the Nazis were employed. So, you're right. The working class who joined the Nazis mostly possessed jobs.

[argeiphontes]

(Maybe OT, and maybe already mentioned, but what strikes me about the class composition of the Nazis, and the article posted in another thread analyzing the class composition of the Tea Party. The similarities are glaring I think. The TP is also mostly petit bourgeois with some working class support.)

[Creative Destruction]

(Maybe OT, and maybe already mentioned, but what strikes me about the class composition of the Nazis, and the article posted in another thread analyzing the class composition of the Tea Party. The similarities are glaring I think. The TP is also mostly petit bourgeois with some working class support.)

Indeed, and the working class support for the Tea Party comes from the same areas that working class support for the Nazis came from: small towns and rural working class. What's interesting is that rural America has always been a pretty strong staging ground for fights between the right-wing and the far-left. A really good book on this subject is Agrarian Socialism In America: Marx, Jefferson and Jesus In The Oklahoma Countryside (http://books.google.com/books?id=nJo-GfqO0nIC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false).

There's another obscure, but very good, book about fights for socialism in rural areas in Texas. I don't remember the title at this moment, but it was interesting. Included a little bit about Lucy Parsons. If I find it, I'll post it. I think it was published by Texas A&M or Texas Tech.

[synthesis]

I'm talking about the SA, the 20% - 40% of Nazi membership that was reportedly working class, the "one in four" of the working class that voted for the Nazis in the 30s (according to my link.) Those are significant numbers, again, considering the party was scraping by for quite a number of years until the Nazis got over 30% of the Reichstag in the early 30s. Had those sections of the working class joined up with the SPD or the KPD instead, the Nazis probably wouldn't have been in a position to get anywhere, and they would've been crank trouble-makers.

I guess I was hoping for a little more evidence for the claim that "the working class members that did join [the NSDAP] were instrumental in its rise." Particularly with regard to your last sentence - as Geiseric noted, a large portion of the workers who joined the NSDAP were evacuees from the KPD and the SPD because the latter two were declared illegal, not because they just blindly preferred the NSDAP.

Also, if your numbers and mine are correct, and 46% of the population was working class, and one in four voted for the Nazis, that's about 12% of the population - certainly not negligible, but I wouldn't call it "instrumental" either.

[Creative Destruction]

I guess I was hoping for a little more evidence for the claim that "the working class members that did join [the NSDAP] were instrumental in its rise." Particularly with regard to your last sentence - as Geiseric noted, a large portion of the workers who joined the NSDAP were evacuees from the KPD and the SPD because the latter two were declared illegal, not because they just blindly preferred the NSDAP.

The SPD and the KPD were declared illegal after Hitler had consolidated his power. The membership numbers we're quoting, at least from Dick Geary's article, are all numbers through 1932. Hitler didn't consolidate his power until 1933, with the Enabling Law.


Also, if your numbers and mine are correct, and 46% of the population was working class, and one in four voted for the Nazis, that's about 12% of the population - certainly not negligible, but I wouldn't call it "instrumental" either.

It's pretty significant considering at around the peak of their time in the Reichstag the Nazi Party got there, in 1932, with 33% of the vote, which made them the largest plural party in the parliament. If you take 12% of that out of the equation (it was in that election that 1 in 4 of the working class voted for the Nazis), they wouldn't have been at all powerful enough to make the demands and moves that they did. Those votes would've been spread, likely, through the SPD (most 'defectors' to the Nazis came from the SPD) and the Centre Party. That's pretty instrumental in my eyes. The KPD and SPD weren't outlawed until after the Nazis burned the Reichstag and blamed it on the Communists, which was the impetus for the '33 Enabling Law that made Hitler dictator.

[synthesis]

It's pretty significant considering at around the peak of their time in the Reichstag the Nazi Party got there, in 1932, with 33% of the vote, which made them the largest plural party in the parliament. If you take 12% of that out of the equation (it was in that election that 1 in 4 of the working class voted for the Nazis), they wouldn't have been at all powerful enough to make the demands and moves that they did.

So if the German working class was almost 50% of the population, and the Nazis came out on top with only the support of a quarter of them, doesn't that indicate to you that the NSDAP was not rooted in the working class anywhere near the extent to which it was rooted in the petite-bourgeoisie?

[Comrade #138672]

While some classifications may be objected to, I applaud your effort. We need more detailed studies like this.

[synthesis]

While some classifications may be objected to, I applaud your effort. We need more detailed studies like this.

Thanks. I'm sure this has all been done before; I basically wanted to research it for myself and figured I might as well post what I found. I think it's a discussion that's worth repeating every so often, given the vast difference of opinion about the role of the petite-bourgeoisie in revolution and reaction.

[Creative Destruction]

So if the German working class was almost 50% of the population, and the Nazis came out on top with only the support of a quarter of them, doesn't that indicate to you that the NSDAP was not rooted in the working class anywhere near the extent to which it was rooted in the petite-bourgeoisie?

This will be, at least, the second or third time in this very thread that I have said it: the Nazi Party was made up primarily of and for the middle class. No one disputes this and it still does not contradict what I initially said. The Nazis were antagonistic to the working class, particularly when and after the Night of the Long Knives happened. No one disputes this and it still does not contradict what I initially said.

[Red_Banner]

This will be, at least, the second or third time in this very thread that I have said it: the Nazi Party was made up primarily of and for the middle class. No one disputes this and it still does not contradict what I initially said. The Nazis were antagonistic to the working class, particularly when and after the Night of the Long Knives happened. No one disputes this and it still does not contradict what I initially said.


Even Trotsky recognizes that in Fascism What It Is and How To Fight It.

[synthesis]

This will be, at least, the second or third time in this very thread that I have said it: the Nazi Party was made up primarily of and for the middle class. No one disputes this and it still does not contradict what I initially said. The Nazis were antagonistic to the working class, particularly when and after the Night of the Long Knives happened. No one disputes this and it still does not contradict what I initially said.

Here's what you "initially said":


The working class is just as much responsible for conservatism and fascism in the 20th century than anyone else.

In response to this:


You should all know that the petit-bourgeoisie is the most reactionary of the classes; the class responsible for conservativism and fascism in the 20th century and the present day.

At this point I just can't tell if you know you're lying or if you've really tricked yourself into believing that you were arguing this backpedaled line from the beginning.

[synthesis]

Also, going back a bit, I felt this was important to clarify:


I'd say that certain members of the coordinator/professional class would be more receptive due to their unique position and education. A corporate lawyer or a multimillionaire plastic surgeon, probably not, but a doctor that works for a free clinic or a legal professional that works within proletarian communities and recognizes the inherent fuckery of the bourgeois legal system because he sees it every day, most certainly.

The original issue wasn't that individuals in the petite-bourgeoisie couldn't support or even benefit from aspects of a socialist revolution; it was that self-proclaimed socialists shouldn't pander to the petite-bourgeoisie as a class like the Sawant campaign has been doing.

[Creative Destruction]

Here's what you "initially said":



In response to this:



At this point I just can't tell if you know you're lying or if you've really tricked yourself into believing that you were arguing this backpedaled line from the beginning.

You don't have an argument, guy. I'm sorry, but nothing presented in this thread contradicts what I said.