Various questions

[TheGodlessUtopian]

Once more I have a list of inquiries which I need help solving.

#1: Socialism and National socialism:Since national socialism is a fascist ideology and marxism is the polar opposite of fascism then why do they both share the name 'socialism'?

#2: Left communism: What exactly are the beliefs of left communists and why do they oppose PSL members ( uhhh...marxist-leninist would be the correct term right?)?

#3: Utopian Socialism: What is this creation and does it factor into the modern world anymore?

#4: Statism: This is what again? The belief that a socialist state should be run by a single supreme leader, or something else?

[Widerstand]

#1: Socialism and National socialism:Since national socialism is a fascist ideology and marxism is the polar opposite of fascism then why do they both share the name 'socialism'?

Hitler's party was called NSDAP (National Socialist German Workers Party), and the party members referred to themselves as National Socialists (Nazis). However, he later regretted the word socialist because of it's ties with communism. Göbbels saw national socialism as a countermovement to marxist internationalism, creating a socialism for the German people only. Similarly, Trotsky described Stalin's USSR (and Germany) as national socialist, because of Stalin's concept of "socialism in one country".

#4: Statism: This is what again? The belief that a socialist state should be run by a single supreme leader, or something else?

From wikipedia:

"Statism (or etatism) is a term assigned to political movements and trends that are seen as supporting the use of the state to achieve goals, both economic and social."

This is the way I see it used on here most of the time, usually used by Anarchists to differ between Marxist ideologies that endorse a state (most of them), and those that don't (Council Communists, and I think some Luxemburgists/Left Comms).

Not too sure on #2 and #3.

[Zanthorus]

Left communism: What exactly are the beliefs of left communists and why do they oppose PSL members ( uhhh...marxist-leninist would be the correct term right?)?

Left-Communism refers to those groups on the extreme left-wing of the Communist International, all of which were kicked out for various reasons between the period 1920-1930. They were groups which opposed the degeneration of the Russian revolution and the Comintern before the formation of the Left Opposition and 'Trotskyism' and as such took stances to the left of the Trots. There were Left-Communist groups in Britain and Russia, but the two main currents were the German Left (Which was closely tied up to the Dutch Left, and as such the tendency is usually referred to collectively as the German-Dutch Left) and the Italian Left.

The German Left (Which also had a small following among members of the Socialist Party in America, especially among the immigrant sectors) was formed on the basis of lessons drawn from the 1918-19 German revolution. They opposed participation in parliament, saying that Communists should base themselves purely on the organs of working class power (The Workers' Councils and Factory Committees). They also thought that the regular trade unions had become instruments of capital, and as such it was the job of revolutionaries to work outside and against them, although some of them had sympathies with 'revolutionary' unions like the IWW. The German Left was kicked out of the KPD in April 1920 and formed the KAPD which remained affiliated to the Communist International for two years. The KAPD was already beggining to distance itself from traditional vanguardism by declaring itself not a political party in the traditional sense of the word. After '22, the current went into something of a decline, with it's militants repudiating party organisation and basing themselves on the 'spontaneous' action of the working-class, as well as rejecting the Russian revolution as a bourgeois revolution. The ideas they formed in this later period are generally referred to as 'Councillism'.

The Italian Left was founded on the basis of the struggle of the 'Abstentionist' fraction of the Partito Socialista Italiano against the reformist 'Maximalist Electionist' majority during the first world war. The Abstentionists also refused electoral participation, but unlike the German left they held to Lenin's ideas on entryism into the trade unions. Unfortunately, the Abstentionists had a somewhat harder time breaking with the Maximalists, since unlike the majority of the 'centrist' social-democrats, the latter had remained anti-war. Further, the Maximalists had applied for affiliation to the Comintern, which meant any splinter group would not be connected with the International communist movement. The Partito Comunista d'Italia was finally formed in 1921 when Amadeo Bordiga managed to get two points added to Lenin's 19 point program at the Second congress of the Communist International. Partly because of their closer relationship with the Comintern under Lenin, the PCI's Left fraction remained faithful to Lenin's Russia while rejecting the Soviet Union under Stalin as with the Trotskyists (And even initally held to Trotsky's ideas about Russia as a 'degenerated workers' state'). They did however, come into conflict with Lenin on the question of electoral participation, as well as on the adoption of the 'United Front'. In general, they rejected all kinds of 'anti-fascism' which involved teaming up with either the bourgeois-democratic or social-democratic parties and defending the existing state regime, and argued that the only acceptable form of 'anti-fascist' politics would be the overthrow of all forms of bourgeois rule, wether fascist, stalinist or 'democratic'.

We would disagree with the PSL's commitment to standing candidates in the parliamentary maskerade, as well as their commitment to supporting the national bourgeoisie of 'opressed nations' against the bourgeoisie of 'opressor nations', and their advocating that workers' die in the defence of the interests of their national bourgeoisie. We would also disagree with the PSL's defence of the Stalin-era Soviet Union, and the post-Stalin Soviet Union.

[Adil3tr]

Once more I have a list of inquiries which I need help solving.

#1: Socialism and National socialism:Since national socialism is a fascist ideology and marxism is the polar opposite of fascism then why do they both share the name 'socialism'? [/QUOTE]
As almost any historian will tell you, this meant very little. There were stormtroopers who did want some change in Germany, but Hitler had them killed. Hitler was a corporatist, and Fascism is simply capitalist reaction against any threat. Remember Hitler and Mussolini didn't "Rise to power," they were appointed. After which they sent the socialists and communists to the work camps.

#2: Left communism: What exactly are the beliefs of left communists and why do they oppose PSL members ( uhhh...marxist-leninist would be the correct term right?)?

NO! These people take it a little farther than others. Like during the Revolution in Russia they wanted to keep the national minorities within russia and wage a revolutionary war to take over Europe, even though that was more than impossible. They seem like nice guys though, better than any capitalist.

#3: Utopian Socialism: What is this creation and does it factor into the modern world anymore?

Very much so. It it is the ideology of people who try to set up communes in the forest or think the rich can work with the poor to bring about socialism. Its basiclly socialism before marx made it a real ideology.

#4: Statism: This is what again? The belief that a socialist state should be run by a single supreme leader, or something else?

Statism is the belief in a strong state. In this case I think you're referring to stalinism. Its basiclly the whole soviet method. Party control of politics, bureaucracy, big army, and strong government. Its kind of anti socialist if you ask me.

[Zanthorus]

These people take it a little farther than others. Like during the Revolution in Russia they wanted to keep the national minorities within russia and wage a revolutionary war to take over Europe, even though that was more than impossible.

I think you're referring to the 1918 Left-Communist tendency that was formed in the Bolshevik party, with members including Bukharin and Radek. This was a very early phase in the development of the Communist Left, and as such many of the 1918 Russian Left's thesis are rejected by modern Left-Communists. In point of fact, it was not that the Left-Communist tendency wanted to keep national minorities in Russia, or that they wanted to wage a revolutionary war to take over europe. What they were opposed to was the concluding of a peace with German Imperialism which involved a significant annexation of territory to samesaid Imperialism. They also polemicised against the 'petty-bourgeois' policies which were being pursued by the Soviet government at the time, including the introduction of piece work, the lengthening of the working day, and 'state-capitalist' agreements with bourgeois specialists and the 'captains of industry':

In the event of a rejection of active proletarian politics, the conquests of the workers' and peasants' revolution will start to coagulate into a system of state capitalism and petty bourgeois economic relations. 'The defence of the socialist fatherland' will then prove in actual fact to be defence of a petty bourgeois motherland subject to the influence of international capital.

[...]

In place of a transition from partial nationalisations to general socialisation of big industry, agreements with 'captains of industry' must lead to the formation of large trusts led by them and embracing the basic branches of industry, which may with external help take the form of state enterprises. Such a system of organisation of production gives a social base for evolution in the direction of state capitalism and is a transitional stage in it.

[...]

The following points are necessary:

[...]

Not the introduction of piece-work and the lengthening of the working day, which in circumstances of rising unemployment are senseless, but the introduction by local economic councils and trade unions of standards of manufacture and shortening of the working day with increase in the number of shifts and broad organisation of productive social labour.

The granting of broad independence to local Soviets and not the checking of their activities by commissars sent by the central power. Soviet power and the party of the proletariat must seek support in the class autonomy of the broad masses, to the development of which all efforts must be directed.

http://libcom.org/library/theses-lef...ts-russia-1918

But again, the demands of the Russian Communist Left at this time, especially on the question of 'revolutionary war', are not so widely accepted by modern Left-Communists:

...is ‘revolutionary war' the principal means for extending the revolution? Does the proletariat in power in one region have the task of exporting revolution at bayonet point to the world proletariat? The comments of the Italian Left on the Brest-Litovsk question are significant in this regard:

"Of the two tendencies in the Bolshevik party who confronted each other at the time of Brest-Litovsk, Lenin's and Bukharin's, we think that it was the former who was more in line with the needs of the world revolution. The positions of the fraction led by Bukharin, according to which the function of the proletarian state was to liberate the workers of other countries through a ‘revolutionary war', are in contradiction with the very nature of the proletarian revolution and the historic role of the proletariat." (‘Parti-Etat-Internationale: L'Etat Proletarien', Bilan n°18, April-May, 1935)

In contrast to the bourgeois revolution, which could indeed be exported by military conquest, the proletarian revolution depends on the conscious struggle of the proletariat of each country against its own bourgeoisie: "The victory of a proletarian state against a capitalist state (in the territorial sense of the word) in no way means the victory of the revolution". (ibid).

http://en.internationalism.org/ir/19...communist_left

They seem like nice guys though, better than any capitalist.

Aw shucks

[Red Commissar]

#1: Socialism and National socialism:Since national socialism is a fascist ideology and marxism is the polar opposite of fascism then why do they both share the name 'socialism'?

In the interwar years in Germany, capitalism was unsurprisingly seen in a bad light. For what it's worth, the NSDAP did begin as a scatterbrained radical-populist group that felt that their brand of socialism was better suited to countering what they saw as "capitalism" as well Marxist socialism (Communists) and Reformist socialism (ie social democrats of that time).

The term socialism and its use by the NSDAP during their campaigning was their way of trying to get working class support and taking the support of their main opponents away. In some ways one could see this is a way of the NSDAP shoving it in

Ideologically there was a lot different. On a surface level some will point out welfare measures and economic regulation, which to some people is sufficient enough for "socialism" to be applied.

"National Socialism" took cues from corporatist approaches that Italy championed and it was incorporated into their system. There was a concept of class collaboration built along nationalism.

Social relations were not changed much from a capitalist society. Really an American or someone else from another developed nation probably would have not felt too alienated or out of place in Germany at the time. Some of the economic proposals were not too different from social democratic proposals, but they were directed for a different purpose than those people were. But in the end it was a capitalist society. Indeed along with Italy a number of Americans, ranging from big businessmen (Ford) down to small time demagogue tended to express admiration for these countries for being stable, ending labor danger, etc... I don't need to tell you that Marxism is built on a concept of the proletariat, working class, assuming control of the state through a revolution and working towards communism. National "socialism" is not that.

In public speeches early on they made use of it to get on the anti-capitalist mood, but in private Hitler expressed issues with the use of "socialism" in their party and for the most part they began phasing it out later on.

#2: Left communism: What exactly are the beliefs of left communists and why do they oppose PSL members ( uhhh...marxist-leninist would be the correct term right?)?

Zan answered this well enough.

#3: Utopian Socialism: What is this creation and does it factor into the modern world anymore?

Utopian Socialism, as the name implies, refers to forms of socialism which were not feasible. In the years before Marx and Engels formulated their critiques of Capitalism and their development of socialism, what we knew as socialism was typically cult-like in nature. Some early examples of so-called utopianists:

-Charles Fourier
-Robert Owens
-Saint-Simon

These men and their followers attempted to make communities founded on their principles. Taking a look at them they tended to appeal a lot to religious sensibilities of people. What they shared in common was almost immediately failing. The duo would also see it as socialism that was developed out of a crude interpretation of class.

Taking a look at some selections from Engels' Socialism: Utopian and Scientific...

These were theoretical enunciations, corresponding with these revolutionary uprisings of a class not yet developed; in the 16th and 17th centuries, Utopian pictures of ideal social conditions; in the 18th century, actual communistic theories (Morelly and Mably)[2]. The demand for equality was no longer limited to political rights; it was extended also to the social conditions of individuals. It was not simply class privileges that were to be abolished, but class distinctions themselves. A Communism, ascetic, denouncing all the pleasures of life, Spartan, was the first form of the new teaching. Then came the three great Utopians: Saint-Simon, to whom the middle-class movement, side by side with the proletarian, still had a certain significance; Fourier; and Owen, who in the country where capitalist production was most developed, and under the influence of the antagonisms begotten of this, worked out his proposals for the removal of class distinction systematically and in direct relation to French materialism.

...

This historical situation also dominated the founders of Socialism. To the crude conditions of capitalistic production and the crude class conditions correspond crude theories. The solution of the social problems, which as yet lay hidden in undeveloped economic conditions, the Utopians attempted to evolve out of the human brain. Society presented nothing but wrongs; to remove these was the task of reason. It was necessary, then, to discover a new and more perfect system of social order and to impose this upon society from without by propaganda, and, wherever it was possible, by the example of model experiments. These new social systems were foredoomed as Utopian; the more completely they were worked out in detail, the more they could not avoid drifting off into pure phantasies.

....

The Utopians’ mode of thought has for a long time governed the Socialist ideas of the 19th century, and still governs some of them. Until very recently, all French and English Socialists did homage to it. The earlier German Communism, including that of Weitling, was of the same school. To all these, Socialism is the expression of absolute truth, reason and justice, and has only to be discovered to conquer all the world by virtue of its own power. And as an absolute truth is independent of time, space, and of the historical development of man, it is a mere accident when and where it is discovered. With all this, absolute truth, reason, and justice are different with the founder of each different school. And as each one’s special kind of absolute truth, reason, and justice is again conditioned by his subjective understanding, his conditions of existence, the measure of his knowledge and his intellectual training, there is no other ending possible in this conflict of absolute truths than that they shall be mutually exclusive of one another. Hence, from this nothing could come but a kind of eclectic, average Socialism, which, as a matter of fact, has up to the present time dominated the minds of most of the socialist workers in France and England. Hence, a mish-mash allowing of the most manifold shades of opinion: a mish-mash of such critical statements, economic theories, pictures of future society by the founders of different sects, as excite a minimum of opposition; a mish-mash which is the more easily brewed the more definite sharp edges of the individual constituents are rubbed down in the stream of debate, like rounded pebbles in a brook.

To make a science of Socialism, it had first to be placed upon a real basis.

If you read through the rest of it, they go into depth about Fourier, Saint-Simon, and Owen in particular, and admit they had a good idea of the ills of society. However what they proposed was a naive and often wildly imaginative ideas of socialism which Marx and Engels felt that socialists in their day should move beyond.

There were often communities set up like I mentioned earlier. The United States had their share of them too, all of them with the same fate. Nowadays, like it was in the past, it is employed as a derogatory term towards people who hold a crude understanding of socialism, or at least one that isn't really rooted in an analysis of the world than it is in more abstract elements.

#4: Statism: This is what again? The belief that a socialist state should be run by a single supreme leader, or something else?

This is more of a derogatory term to be honest. In the most general term it means the use of a state to solve matters in society, but in a more negative connotation would refer to a dictatorial use of the state, which anarchists would say is inherent in anything which tries to use the state (and to that end they would say a true revolution would take down both the state and capitalism)

[Adil3tr]

I think you're referring to the 1918 Left-Communist tendency that was formed in the Bolshevik party, with members including Bukharin and Radek. This was a very early phase in the development of the Communist Left, and as such many of the 1918 Russian Left's thesis are rejected by modern Left-Communists. In point of fact, it was not that the Left-Communist tendency wanted to keep national minorities in Russia, or that they wanted to wage a revolutionary war to take over europe. What they were opposed to was the concluding of a peace with German Imperialism which involved a significant annexation of territory to samesaid Imperialism. They also polemicised against the 'petty-bourgeois' policies which were being pursued by the Soviet government at the time, including the introduction of piece work, the lengthening of the working day, and 'state-capitalist' agreements with bourgeois specialists and the 'captains of industry':

I meant no disrespect comrade. I'll take you over any Stalinist, too!