Southerners like Fitzhugh pushed the Democratic Party towards a socialist-slavery plantation society that would impose a dependency on government largesse under the shadow of paternalistic racism. His was a popular voice in justifying slavery, finding support among many southern politicians, slaveholders, and newspapers.
American writer
Lawrence K. Samuels (born December 7, 1951) is an American author, classical liberal, and libertarian activist. He is best known as the editor and contributing author of Facets of Liberty: A Libertarian Primer and In Defense of Chaos: The Chaology of Politics, Economics and Human Action.
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After the Confederate States of America lost the Civil War in 1865, it was the Democratic Party which took center stage in opposing any civil rights protections for blacks. They opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which the Republican Congress passed, over President Andrew Johnson’s veto. The law was simple and pertinent; it was ‘designed to provide blacks with the right to own private property, sign contracts, sue and serve as witnesses in a legal proceeding.’
Some scholars now refer to the Democratic Party’s long-time support of slavery and supremacy as the epitome of a ‘thievery society,’ where the societal collectives own and control everything, even people. Such a thievery polity would bestow on governing bodies the authority to steal anything with immunity, for whatever noble or ignoble purpose. Perhaps this is why William Lloyd Garrison (1805–1879), the most prominent abolitionist in the United States, denounced slavery as an institution of ‘man-stealing,’ writing: ‘Every slave is a stolen man; every slaveholder is a man-stealer.’ The concept of self-ownership, which dates from John Locke, opposes slavery, socialism, and authoritarianism, because they would inhibit or prohibit individuals from pursuing ownership of property. In this way, any Borg-like collective would have the authority, often over the wishes of individual citizens, to bar people from running their own lives as they see fit—literally making slaves of the populace.
Once this proslavery link to socialism was detected in recent years, scholars began to piece together the modern-statist Left’s nefarious past. As it turns out, historically, the roots of the slavocracy Left are traceable to the forbears of the Democratic Party, who actively supported enslavement, lynching, segregation, racism, welfarism, proto-socialism, paternalism, and white supremacy before and after the American Civil War. In this sense, the beginning of the Democratic Party in the late 1820s represents the start of an anti-Founders movement initiated to invalidate the original intent of the creators of liberal capitalism and self-ownership.
The adherents of the German Nazi movement reflected a profoundly left-wing footprint not only as social revolutionaries, secularists of political theodicy, and diehard collectivists, but as brothers posturing and fighting for alpha-male dominance. As Nazism developed, it was heavily influenced by the early Utopian socialists, the neo-socialists, and various movements to reform Marxism, opposing any independent political or religious movement that might eclipse its own authority. Extremely hostile towards the aristocracy, Christianity, and capitalism, Nazis considered themselves revolutionaries—radicals determined to bring about a classless society of superior racial egalitarianism bathed in volk socialism. There was nothing traditionally conservative about their movement.
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By almost all measures, the Hitler’s German Labor Front carried out most of their pro-labor promises while Lenin and Stalin ran roughshod over their proletariat subjects. Conditions for workers and peasants alike plunged after Lenin nationalized independent labor unions and the economy. Violent labor strikes paralyzed Russian cities while, in the countryside, over one hundred peasant revolts erupted during early 1921 alone. Unlike Hitler’s Germany, thousands of striking Russian workers were shot, imprisoned, or executed, particularly during the blood-soaked saga of the Kronstadt rebellion in March 1921.
Joseph Goebbels once applauded the generosity of Hitler’s welfare state, boasting in a 1944 editorial, ‘Our Socialism,’ that ‘We and we alone [the Nazis] have the best social welfare measures. Everything is done for the nation… the Jews are the incarnation of capitalism.’ After all, in addition to old age insurance (social security) and universal socialized single-payer healthcare, the Nazi administration provided a plethora of social safety net benefits: rent supplements, holiday homes for mothers, extra food for larger families, over 8,000 day-nurseries, unemployment and disability benefits, old-age homes, and interest-free loans for married couples, to name just a few. But there was more: under the Third Reich’s redistributive-like policies, the main social welfare organization—the ‘National Socialist People’s Welfare’ (NSV)—was not only in charge of doling out social relief but ‘intended to realize the vision of society by means of social engineering.’ In other words, the Nazi welfare system ushered in a menagerie of welfare programs: aid to poor families and pregnant women, nutrition programs, welfare for children, ad nauseam. The Nazis also put energy into cleansing of their cities of ‘asocials,’ which ushered in a no-welfare-benefits-for-the-unfit program, based on a welfarism that was committed to a sort of social Darwinist collectivism.
By 1934, Hitler’s administration had ‘transferred many functions of individual state (Länder) to the Reich,’ destroying the semi-autonomous federalism of the German states and turning Nazism into the quintessential anti-state rights ideology. Not only were German state governments ‘being overthrown’ by Hitler’s Nazification’ policies, but so were local governments, in accordance with a January 30, 1934, law that ‘abolishes all states’ rights.’ With the support of armed SA Stormtroopers and SS units, local Nazis occupied town halls, ‘terrorizing mayors and councils into resigning’ and replacing them with Nazi-loyal selections.
As Germany’s new chancellor in 1933, Hitler inherited a welfare state, which he strengthened, fundamentally transforming Germany into a utopian-style welfare-warfare state that imposed price and wage controls, rent controls, progressive income taxes, corporate taxes, redistribution of wealth, onerous regulations, and deficit spending, which led to shortages and rationing under the disincentive effects of ‘high taxes.’ Hitler and the National Socialists were able to ramp up Germany’s welfare system to the point where it became the largest, most massive, all-encompassing social service system of its time, even, according to some, rivaling the Soviet Union’s inadequate socialist safety net. And in an effort to provide more healthcare services, the Nazi regime enhanced what was essentially a universal single-payer healthcare system fully owned and operated by the Third Reich.
Prior to World War II, most socialists and socialist parties of Europe held strong anti-Semitic opinions and railed against the capitalistic middle class and wealthy, especially money-lending Jews who engaged in usury. Their schemes called for wealth-confiscation and redistribution to create a truly equal society.
The ideology of Nazism included many of the same tenets of the social democrat and socialist democratic gradualists, today and in the past. The Nazis took gradualist positions to bring about socialism, social welfare measures, socioeconomic equality (known as Völkisch equality), classless society, public work projects, mandatory labor union membership, and class cooperation previously found appealing to Marxist heretics and reformers.
Summarizing his deficiencies, Karl Marx was neither progressive nor enlightened; he was a racist, anti-Semite, a German nationalist, a warmonger, autocratic, anti-freedom proponent, Machiavellian, pro-Black slavery, petty, homophobic, megalomaniac, a bully and slanderer, anti-choice, and a reactionary against liberalism and industrial capitalism. In almost every sense, Marx fit the quintessential image of Hitler like a tight glove, both appearing almost indistinguishable. Like father and son, Marx and Hitler were two social justice warriors, determined to weaponize intolerance, racism, and nationalism for what they call the greater good. In so many ways, considering their almost identical political and social makeup, metaphorically speaking, Hitler could easily be regarded as the son of Marx.
Marx also manifested chauvinistic and racial-nationalist sentiments in his disparagement of Slavic Russians,… According to Christopher Hollis, a British university teacher and politician, Marx had no faith in the equality of nations, and was instead a ‘through and through… pan-German nationalist’ where discourse ‘about the higher and the lower races was language that came most naturally to his pen.’ Instead of standing up for internationalism, in 1848, both Marx and Engels campaigned for the unification of Germany, publishing a short Communist Party of Germany pamphlet demanding that the ‘whole of Germany shall be declared a united, indivisible republic.’
Despite his subsequent reputation for anti-Marxist tirades, Hitler did not fight or oppose the communists during this time, as some might presume. He was serving them, although he later shared few details about this period in his life. One thing seems certain: Hitler did not try to escape from the political thicket in Munich, nor did he join the anti-Bolshevik armed forces of General Franz Ritter von Epp.